


Battle Cry of the Sable Wolf

by Slytherette97



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: And Sexy Times Ahead, Artistic Harry, BAMF Harry Potter, Blood and Gore, Clueless Dumbledore, Harry Knows How to Destress, Harry is a Medical Mystery, Harry to the Rescue, Loads of Things Are Different, M/M, Magically Powerful Harry, Music of all Ages, Not all is as it seems, Powerful Harry Potter, Protective Older Brother OMC, Some Child Abuse, The Impossible is Possible, Unintentional Runaway, Vampires, Violence, Well-Meaning Dumbledore, Werewolves, Will Have Slash, Wrong Boy-Who-Lived, and SMUT, battles, more tags to come, sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-09-09 04:14:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 63,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8875540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slytherette97/pseuds/Slytherette97
Summary: Concerned about the backlash that occurred when Harry defeated Voldemort, Lily and James have Harry's twin, Alaric, take the attention of the public to give Harry a chance to relax and recuperate; however, that also means that Harry must go to the Dursleys, as the only non-magic resort left. Unfortunately, or rather fortunately for Harry, magic isn't as separated from the Muggle world as they like to think.





	1. The Prophecy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to my new story! 
> 
> Okay, so I've had this one in my computer for God know's how long, and I decided to spruce it up - just to see how it looked, and I have to admit, I kind of like where the story-line in this one's going. I think it's interesting enough not to abandon, at least for now anyway.
> 
> Please check it over and get back to me, yeah? I'd really appreciate some advice on this story, seeing as I'm posting like, two chapters in row in a second. If you catch any details that are incorrect or something's not right, please notify me right away and I'll do my best to fix my blunders!
> 
> Cheers, my lovelies!

** The Prophecy **

_**Wednesday, 14th** _ **_May, 1980._ **   
**Headmaster's Office, Hogwarts** _**.** _

"I find at most times, that a nice Sherbet Lemon helps calm my simmering nerves," said Dumbledore with a meaningful smile, as if he was trying to nudge an unsure customer to one of his best liked products, or was confessing a proud secret. "Would you like one, Lily? Well, perhaps it's best not, you're looking awfully peaky, m'dear. Are you quite well? Shall I summon us both a refreshing cup of tea? I myself find my throat rather dry as of late, and I've found that the House-elves brew a mean peppermint tea that clears that right up. Perhaps it's the weather affecting the both of us, but alas, I shall never know," he mused, peering at her from over his half-mooned spectacles with barely a twinkle in the magnificent blue.

Lily stared unblinkingly at the wizened old man, not thinking for a second that Dumbledore meant only the best for her. Especially with the important news he'd apparently found, as the letter still clutched tightly between her fingers said. She cleared her throat and finally ended her staring, ignoring the way her eyes watered and stung like gritty paper when she blinked. "I'm fine," she said, clearing her throat once again. "But if you'd tell me what you meant in your letter, then perhaps I'd feel a bit more at ease. You've gotten me more than a little worried, Albus. You said that only the direst letters could make it through the wards - and written by your own hand, nonetheless. We've not had any communication between the Longbottoms or the Order in ages, not since we've gone into hiding. It's why I came right away. This news ought to be incredibly serious for me to risk exposure, especially in . . . my condition," she said haltingly, her emerald gaze jumping from the Headmaster's tired face, to the large swell of her stomach hidden not at all convincingly under her robes. She felt her babies move inside her, a tiny fluttering hand pressing against her stomach, as if sensing her gaze was on them. 

She ached to hold them in her arms.

Her children were the reason for their withdrawal from fighting in the war between Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters and Dumbledore's Order of the Phoenix. Dumbledore himself had requested she leave the battles and hide away, and considering that now in hindsight, she should have seen the catch there and then. Dumbledore wouldn't have asked her, one of the most gifted duellers, to sit out of a battle just because she was pregnant. Many other Order members had been pregnant when they fought - and sometimes fell, due to their children growing off of their magical cores.

It was just a small hope that gnawed at her that Dumbledore finally realized that pregnant women couldn't fight in the war.

Dumbledore attempted a smile, but it fell rather flat when his eyes followed her gaze. "I assure you, I would not risk your life and the lives of your children for anything inconsequential," he murmured, an ominous shadow passing over his weathered face. "It pertains to the reason for your going into hiding, actually," he said, voice going a little brittle.

Lily looked up at him at that, eyes hardening into glacial emeralds from the soft maternal gaze it had been. Dumbledore looked sore to see that glow turn into something so hard. "You never did fully explain why we had to leave the fight," she said cautiously. "The last time Alice and I spoke, she told me her reasoning behind her own retreat from the war. It was the same thing you'd told James and I," she pursed her lips. "Why?"

Dumbledore cleared his throat, and reached for his bowl of lemon drops, popping two into his mouth and rolling them thrice over his tongue. It seemed to bolster him for the coming conversation - as rocky as it was going to be. "The reason for you and your friends' withdrawal from the war is a lot more complex than you think, Lily," he answered quietly. "It is for the Greater Good of the world that I asked this of you. I know that it had stung when I had requested you and James take a leave of absence from the Order, but it was of the utmost importance that you had done so."

"You're finally going to tell me?" Lily hedged carefully, though her expression told Dumbledore that it wasn't a question.

Dumbledore nodded nonetheless. "Yes, well. You must at least attempt to understand me before you react. This is no light news to be shared with others, only to be shared with those you trust the most," he said, cerulean eyes sharpening as the walls around them flashed with non-verbal security wards, wards he made sure had no holes or vulnerable places in. He wouldn't fail again. He sucked on the lemon drops for another moment, before clearing his throat and looking the red-haired woman in the eye. "It is because of a prophecy that you and Mrs Longbottom have been hidden away. It was foretold that a savior would be born as the seventh month dies, with the power to defeat the Dark Lord once and for all. In all of the Order, only you and Alice fell pregnant and fit the criterion as those who would birth our champion, in as much the same time as the seventh month shall end. It is only a matter of when, and whom shall arrive first, that is the problem."

"But we don't have to consider this prophecy as probable," Lily said warily, cupping her rounded belly as if to reassure herself that her children were still with her. "I mean, _He_ doesn't know about it, so it couldn't possibly come true. My children, and Alice's son, are still safe while _He_ doesn't know ... Right, Albus?"

"In essence, you are correct," Dumbledore conceded cautiously, tipping his head in a short nod that made his long, white beard jerk against his stress-shrunken belly. Lily didn't at all relax at hearing that, sensing that there was a very large and important 'but' coming. "That would be the case if none had witnessed or overheard it, ergo, the prophecy itself wouldn't have any weight in the war and would remain an unimportant piece to the puzzle. However, I sincerely regret to inform you that if it were not for our enemy's spy, we would not have to suffer this threat. I fear that the Dark Lord already knows, and is waiting in the wings, anticipating the birth of his prophesied foe. It is why I asked you to withdraw to a safe place, and why I will only allow you my own letter for information on the war and for correspondence. Trust is a commodity that is even harder to come by during this war, especially as we know not whom our enemies and their spies are."

Dumbledore bowed his head in shame then, those all-knowing eyes closing in an age-old weariness that set Lily's teeth on edge. "As witnessed by my blunder in not handling the prophecy carefully enough around my peers, I have caused a ripple effect in the lives of many. Your family's, and Alice's," he said in a bereft voice. 

Lily bit her lower lip harshly, her glimmering green eyes unsure and naively hopeful. "But you can't be sure that it only concerns Alice and I," she said tremulously, voice breathy from shock. "It could be someone else. It doesn't have to be someone in the Order - it doesn't have to be someone close to you. You just need to find out where else to look, another country or - or town. It can't be my children, I -I refuse to . . . Oh, sweet merciful Merlin, _no_."

Dumbledore heaved a world weary sigh, and seemed to shrink in upon himself, his age seeming to triple with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He regarded Lily with compassionate, saddened eyes, but there was no small amount of pity in them. She cringed at the sight. 

"I assure you, I have thought of everything there is to think about. Yourself and James, along with Alice and Frank, both fit the criterion of the prophecy; _'Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies,'_ ," he said quietly, looking and feeling very, very old. "The entire prophecy itself states that one of the three children between you and Alice will defeat him, through powers the Dark Lord knows not. I have sat here for hours upon hours and pondered what that power may be ever since the prophecy had been unveiled, but it has yet to reveal itself. I fear that much heartache is still yet to come."

Tears of desperation and shock flooded Lily's eyes before she could so much as blink, and her chest constricted with the thought of one of her own children battling the Dark Lord. Horrific memories of Order missions to decimated Muggle villages filled her mind - the orphanage Voldemort had attacked was most present, but instead of the faces of those poor mangled Muggle children, she saw children with hers and James's features, dead and lying on the ground, eyes forever open and seeing their last horrific moments before blessed darkness took them. 

A sob escaped her, and she wrapped her arms around her children, praying - hoping that it wasn't true. Hoping that the prophecy would pick someone else in the least, or better yet, that someone would off the megalomaniac Dark Lord before it could come true.

Her little boys, part of a prophecy that affects the entire fate of the world. It was too much for her poor heart to bear.

"I'm dreadfully sorry, my dear girl," Dumbledore whispered, face grave and bleak, and looking so utterly wretched that Lily had to consciously remind herself that it was her own children, and not his that were in danger of fighting off a Dark Lord. Unlike at other times when condolences were necessary but not truly meant, he seemed to be truly regretful. But it still stung her to hear it, nonetheless. "If I could have prevented this from happening, I surely would have. This sort of pain should never be inflicted upon such good people, James and yourself least of all. But believe me when I say that I shall do my best to protect you and Mrs Longbottom, and the children you both carry, with my life. They will not suffer needlessly," he vowed passionately, his voice gaining the luster he was known world wide for. 

A voice only an experienced champion could have.

Forcefully composing herself as much as she could, Lily stood a little shakily from her seat, her shoulders still shuddering with repressed sobs even as they straightened from the hunch she'd had them in, and her arms were still wrapped tightly around her belly - around her children. "I have to go," she said unsteadily, voice high and trembling and in no way convincing her old mentor that she was in any way, shape or form, fine. The tears pouring down her face was evidence enough. "James is probably worried - I – Thank you for the letter, Albus. It was good to - to get out of the house, once again."

"It was good to see you again, my dear. Even with such grave news of the probable future," Dumbledore said softly, watching her stumble her way to the fireplace with a deep sadness etched into his face. "Give my love to James and the boys. I will no doubt be seeing them again soon, at another Order meeting. Take great care of yourself, Lily. You cannot survive the battle, only to fall apart in the war. Be strong, and have faith that all will be right in the end. Dark times only go on for so long before they succumb to the light."

"Will do, Headmaster," Lily said in that heart-breaking trembling voice, sounding much too close to falling apart then and there, but before Dumbledore could say anything else or offer a sliver of comfort, she took up a pinch of Floo powder, and tossed it into the flames of the glowing hearth, hardly waiting a beat for the flames to turn green before calling out, " _The Doghouse!"_ and stepping through. She was no sooner swept up in the green flames and gone from the Headmaster's office, than one could blink. A heavy sadness was left in her wake, one that stank up the large rooms as if a poisonous fog hung in the air.

Dumbledore didn't remove himself from his office for hours after their meeting, the vision of lovely Lily Potter looking so distraught and upset still haunting his weary old mind. His regrets only seemed to be piling up with his old age, and while it wasn't uncommon for someone of the older generations to have many regrets, his cluttered his mind like shades of darkness; one mistake after another varying from bad to worse. He wasn't one to dwell on his mistakes constantly, but it was a surety that he visited those memories frequently - if nothing else, then to learn from them. If he'd taken the time to properly ward Trelawney's room, throwing away the haze of arrogance his misguided mind had taken to cloaking him in, then young Severus Snape wouldn't have overheard the prophecy and reported it back to his Master. The Potters and Longbottoms wouldn't be afraid of every shadow - hiding from the war because of a prophecy that shouldn't have been predicted.

If he hadn't been so arrogant in thinking none would dare to challenge him - go against him so recklessly and forthrightly, then poor Lily Potter and Alice Longbottom would not have to bear the horrible weight of their children becoming potential fighters in the battle with Lord Voldemort. The only warrior of the Light to destroy the Prince of Darkness once and for all.

Dumbledore heaved an unsteady sigh that moved his thin body, and waited for the clock on his hearth to chime seven o'clock - the time he'd asked Alice Longbottom to arrive at. He had yet another task in informing another mother of their child's possible future - or lack thereof. And if strong, brave Lily Potter had begun falling apart just as she left his presence, there was no saying how valiant, sweet little Alice might fare.

 _It is going to be harder to break Alice's heart than Lily's,_ he thought despondently, watching somberly as the clock chimed seven o'clock and the Floo activated, and Alice's pregnant form began to spin through the flames. _At least Lily has had experience with emotional turmoil, as her time with Severus has well enough prepared her for. Poor Alice has yet to have her rose tinted glasses shattered by the heartache of losing someone nearest and dearest to her heart. She is but a young woman deeply entrenched in her love for her husband and growing child, even in the midst of such an atrocious war, it is not enough to cause her heartache. Well, after tonight, I will have remedied that._

"Albus? What is all this about?" Alice queried uncertainly, brushing herself of the soot in his fireplace, even as she toddled her way towards his great desk. His dreadfully vague letter was hanging from her loosely curled fingertips. "I just got your letter, and it said you needed to speak with me urgently. Is everything alright? Did - did you need me for a mission for the Order?" She asked timidly, showing a great reluctance in risking herself, now that she'd finally resigned herself to being pregnant with her first child.

It was a surprise when thoughtful, passionate Alice had acted so brashly in the face of action with Death Eaters - fighting them head on despite her pregnant state. It hadn't sunk in that she'd be carrying another life within her, that she held a serious responsibility to her child until he himself had moved her to the safe wing of the war. 

At face value, she believed him to be protecting her and her growing family. But as soon as he peels back the surface, it'll be clear to her wearied eyes that all wasn't good and pure of heart in war. 

Dumbledore sighed wearily, and, realizing his lemon drops had already dissolved, popped another two into his mouth and sucked soothingly on them. Alice watched him fuss about with nothing and everything on his desk with questioning eyes, an eyebrow raised uncertainly. "Please, sit down, Alice. We have much to discuss," he said quietly, waving at the seat Lily had sat in well over two hours ago.

_A seat I will never stop seeing them in, even well into the future when the war is done and Voldemort defeated. Their tears will be enough to cement the melancholy into the fabric and wood, and will provide me no escape from my horrific mistakes._

"The portraits have been charmed," Alice observed, as if talking about the weather, looking around at the frozen portraits lining the walls as she carefully lowered herself into the squashy chair. Sir Phineas Nigellus did not look the slightest bit happy, having seemed to have spotted what Dumbledore had been doing at the very start, and had his mouth open in an angry snarl that made even Dumbledore want to cringe. Although, rarely did he have a smile on his painted face anyway. The Blacks rarely ever did, even when alive.

"For your protection, I assure you," Dumbledore murmured, and steeled himself not to quail under Alice's suddenly sharp stare.

"There are spies in Hogwarts?" Alice asked tersely, eyes hardening into that warrior glaze that Dumbledore always praised her for. It was the eyes of a soldier, a strategist in the field and one not unused to the sight of atrocities. It was the eyes of a mother bear gearing up to protect her cub.

Dumbledore regarded her sagely, straightening his spine as he rolled the lemon drops over his tongue. A burst of the sour flavor warmed him immeasurably, and soothed his humming magic like the soft caress of a lover. Sweets often did that for the old wizard. "It is a possibility, although not one I find very likely. Given that the Dark Lord has called all of his servants to his side, even the Marked students here. He has grown in arrogance, enough to believe that he no longer needs spies in order to peak into our ranks," he said, not at all bitterly. It was an advantage, after all.

And it made him feel better at over estimating his own reputation and presence.

Alice shut her eyes and sucked in a deep breath, which seemed to actually have an effect in calming her temper. She opened her eyes after a moment and looked at him, a steel wall within her gaze. "What is it that you wanted to speak to me about?" She asked.

Dumbledore took his own little breath, a little curious to see if breathing as deeply actually calmed one, or not. He wasn't surprised when it did; Alice was known for such quick fixes - her homemade herbal tea was one of the best teas he'd ever had the pleasure of tasting, especially when he'd have long, heated discussions with Minister Bagnold concerning the Dark Lord's recent massacres and plans. He sighed - and then sighed again when he realized he was sighing far too much in one day. 

And it had yet to end.

_The troubles of every leader when they are needed. No rest for days and reluctant of any privacy, a hand always knocking at his door for an ear to dribble into._

"Albus?" Alice implored, eyebrows furrowing with heavy concern.

"Would you like a lemon drop?" Dumbledore asked her, and then smiled wryly. "I find that Sherbet lemon helps to keep my fraying nerves calm in the midst of such troubling times . . ."

It was going to be a long night, indeed.


	2. Godfathers

**Godfathers**

_**Thursday, 31** s_ _ **t of** _ _**July, 1980.** _   
**Main bedroom, the Doghouse, Godric's Hollow.**

"James, please be careful – oh, watch his head!" Lily cried, hurrying to get a hand under her baby's tiny neck to support his poor head before her husband could damage anything. He was a tiny thing, just a minuscule six pounds, and he had a shock of black fuzz atop his little head that looked to be a more than possible replica of James's messy locks. She almost dreaded having to try and smooth it down in the future – her husband's nest of hair was only stacking up evidence that perhaps Potter hair wasn't meant to be tamed, and her son's? Well, let that be a battle for another day.

"It's okay, Lily, I've got him. I won't let him be hurt," James insisted softly, his voice hushed with an overwhelming thickness that preceded tears. Lily should know, she'd been crying enough in the past few months to know the symptoms.

"I know," she said, smiling a little wryly. James sent her a wry look, but his eyes didn't stay on her for too long, instead switching between the two little bundles – one in his arms, and the other between her knees on the soft bedding. It was such a proud, loving look, she almost wanted to cry herself. "I just don't want to leave anything to chance. They've only just been born after all, and the slightest change in temperature, touch and noise could do so much damage to them. It all seems so impossible now that they're here, in our arms. They're just so..." She paused, pursing her lips in a silent struggle to find a word to describe them. Other than beautiful, adorable, wonderful, delightful, lovely...

"Little?" James offered, smiling that handsome, crooked smile that she just loved seeing on him. Even if it did seem a little exhausted at the moment, it was still warming to her even more tired eyes.

"Little," she agreed, still bathing herself in the warmth of that smile. But then she remembered an important _something_ , and expelled a long, forceful breath that fluttered red strands of hair from her sticky cheeks. "I don't know how we're going to live with two little babies, both so tiny and feeble in a house as chaotic as ours. Sirius'll try something – I just know it, so don't even look at me like that, James Potter, you know what he's like," she said, giving James's indignant expression her own _look_. When he looked away, rolling his eyes as he did so, she continued. "Peter won't even want to hold them – too small for him, and he fumbles _everything_ including but not limited to his own fork. But Remus won't be so bad, I think. Well, he's the most mature out of you lot, anyway, so he'll at least know heads from tails. But we'll still have to watch them with the boys. They don't know anything about babies any more than we do."

"Sirius and Peter know not to pick up either of the boys without one or both of us there to help them. I sat them both down and told them when we'd first found out you'd been pregnant," James muttered, still indignant, even if her wariness hadn't been directly aimed at him.

"And Remus?" Lily inquired.

"Doesn't trust himself to handle them alone," James admitted, after finding no reason to keep it from his wife, of course. "But, maybe with a little time, he'll get past it and think about settling down himself. Holding a baby for a time or two can do wonders for responsibility and maturity, you know," he told her, smiling just a little bit too smugly for Lily's liking.

"Ah, yes, of course, how silly of me to forget!" Lily said, raising an eyebrow in what could only be called incredulity. "So you _don't_ want that new broom from _Quality Quidditch Supplies_? Should I cancel that order? Seeing as you're _so_ mature and responsible, you won't need a new broom to fly around on. You've got two newborn babies to look after, and you are a father, after all. Children always come first."

"What?"James exclaimed, and then winced when the baby in his arms gave a startled jolt, and his tiny little face began to scrunch up in that all too scary expression. "Oh, no. No, no, son, don't cry, there's no need to cry," he whispered fervently, beginning an awful rocking motion that looked far too jumpy and awkward to soothe a baby. Much less a _Potter_ baby. James blanched when the first squalling wail came from his son, looking so utterly helpless that Lily couldn't help but take pity.

"Pass him to me," Lily said, laughing lightly as she held her arms out for her poor son, who was turning a bit red in the face. "They're due for a feed now, anyway. I don't think you'd want them latching onto you - as big of a breasts you have. I don't think your masculinity could take it - poor as it is."

James gave her a scalding look, before shaking his head roughly and leaning his chest over her arms, his crying baby cradled precariously in his. "Babies don't normally cry on me, I swear it. They usually love me!" James swore, and very carefully let Lily's soft hands slide up under the baby's neck and body, and pull him safely into the circle of her arms.

He watched her pull down the neck of her loose shirt and position the baby at her breast, and watched in fascination as the little tyke's bawling slowed to a grizzle at the motion, enough for him to latch onto her pink nipple and begin suckling ferociously, gumming away none too gently on the tender flesh.

Lily grimaced uncomfortably, her toes curling under the thin blankets, and he cringed alongside her in sympathy, unconsciously rubbing at his own chest.

"Does it hurt that badly?" He asked hesitantly, curiously.

Lily huffed a coarse laugh, careful not to dislodge her grumbling baby. "It's fairly unpleasant, but needs are a must. At least until we can get some formula made up for them to drink instead."

James started in surprise, eyebrows flying half-way up his forehead. "You don't want to keep breastfeeding them?" He asked, deflating just a little bit.

"For a little bit, I will. But as soon as we have formula available, I'm weaning them off me," she informed him staunchly, wincing a little as her son gave a vicious pull and gummed away just a little more intently at her sore breast. She was getting Remus to get that formula straight away, regardless of what James said or thought. She'd even have him deliver it in secret if she had to.

"But it's how mothers bond with their children, especially in the Potter line," James protested. "Don't you -"

Their would-be argument was cut off by the soft pop of a House-elf apparating into the room, so quiet they wouldn't have known she was there, if they hadn't seen her. However, that didn't stop the sleeping baby on the bed from squirming and frowning at the disturbance in the air, his pouty little mouth opening in a tired yawn that looked just about to break his jaw.

The House-elf, Mipsy, blinked at the sight of their two children, and a very soft, adoring look began to shape her long face as she hesitantly approached Lily's bed. Her large tennis ball brown eyes glistened with tears when she saw little Harry wriggling away in his swaddling blankets, eyes just beginning to lazily blink open and reveal their inner cornflower blue – which she could see was already darkening and changing slightly at the corners, if one looked close enough.

His magic, although incredibly young, was strong enough to assess his surroundings with that blank curiosity that came before the shaping of a personality. Mipsy seemed completely in awe over the infant, and was practically stupefied with the amazing sight of a waking newborn.

"Mipsy?" James prompted, after Mipsy continued watching Harry's attempted stretch and wriggle, eyes wide and staring wondrously at her. "Was there something you needed?" He asked.

Mipsy blinked, and then flushed a dull red that seemed to travel from her wrinkled neck and up to the highest point of her long ears. "I is apologizing, Master James," she said tremulously, voice tight with emotions that she seemed to be trying to keep squashed down. "Mipsy was looking at the beautiful Potter heirs – Mistress Lily has done well, sir! Very well, indeed!" She babbled.

Lily offered the elf a bright smile, proud in a way she hadn't felt before giving birth to her sons. She'd done very well in giving birth to her twins, indeed. Even if they'd taken almost twenty-four hours to make an appearance, with what felt like years in between the two. Alaric Henry Potter, the eldest twin, happened to share his birthday with Alice's Neville Frank Longbottom on the 30th of July – they had been born just mere hours apart, Neville at eleven in the morning,and Alaric at three in the afternoon. It had been a very close call, one that had made her body tense all throughout the birth, Dumbledore's words of two months before echoing ominously in her mind. It had been so close to being her eldest, that she'd shed tears when he was finally in her arms.

And when her body had prepared to birth Harry in the late hours on the 30th, still hopeful that it was someone else's child to fill the prophecy - nothing had happened. She had struggled to push her other son out into the world, James and herself keeping a furious eye on the clock, but it just hadn't meant to be. Her baby had stubbornly remained within her womb until the clock had well passed twelve and slid into the wee hours of the morning on the 31st.

Harry James Potter was born at one o'clock in the morning on the 31st of July, just a few hours after his brother, Alaric.

 _Just as the seventh month died,_ she thought, and had to bite back a grimace so as not to alarm her husband to her thinking. The thought had a been a very dark one, and it'd left a foul taste in her mouth. Much like the others when she'd still been pregnant and stressing about the issue of the prophecy. _And my sweet Harry might very well be the Chosen One, destined to fight Voldemort. But he's so little, even littler than Alaric, and he was already so tiny. How can such a tiny person be destined to defeat something so great and terrible? It's impossible. Such a colossal fate shouldn't rest on such tiny shoulders - the shoulders of my youngest son._

"Thank you, Mipsy," Lily said, making sure that her smile stayed fixed firmly in place. When the elf showed no sign of worry or concern, she thought she'd succeeded in hiding her fears, and pressed on eagerly. "Was there anything else?"

Mipsy bobbed her head up and down, ears flopping wildly and slapping against her blushing cheeks like one of those ridiculous wizard hats circulating the fashion arena lately. "Oh, yes, Mistress Lily! Sirs Padfoot, Moony and Wormtail is being in the formal sitting room. They is bringing Wizard liquor and presents for baby Potters, Mistress Lily and Master James. They is being very impatient with Mipsy and the other House-elves."

Lily slowly turned to look up at James, where he was perched on the side of her bed - decisively not looking at her, but rather at the wall as if it was the most fantastic thing he'd ever seen. He likely had guilt written all over his face, and didn't want to give Lily the satisfaction of catching him out on one of his lies. "I didn't know we had a fireplace in our bathroom, James," she said wryly, eyes narrowed into slits. "Warm in there, was it?"

James ducked his head so he didn't have to meet her knowing gaze. "I was running on two hours sleep, Lils. And you can hardly blame me for wanting to tell my best mates that our children had been born," he said sheepishly, cheeks flushing a delicate pink. "Besides, I didn't want you to crush my hand any further than you already had. I can't even feel my thumb as it is, and it's been hours since they've been born!"

"Why you snotty little toerag!" Lily exclaimed, a bubble of surprised laughter passing her lips. "I can't have been squeezing your hand _that_ hard. You're such a little pansy! My God, you must be more delicate than you like any of us to think!" She snorted, snickering loudly.

James scowled and held up his right hand for her to see, where sprawling bruises in the form of tiny finger marks were already blooming where she'd obviously gripped him too tight. Lily didn't so much as blink at them, but she did smile sweetly up at her husband.

"You're like a bloody python when you want to be," he grumbled. "Did I show you these bloody bruises? Because I don't know if you actually saw them - you're _still_ laughing at me!" He exclaimed, feigning exasperation and annoyance, although the upward twitching of the corner of his lips and the glimmer of mirth in his eyes assured her he didn't mean anything by it.

"Well, why don't you try pushing out two bowling balls in two days, then we'll see how many bruises we'll end up with," she replied in kind, grinning up at him.

Suddenly, the suckling at her breast slowed to an abrupt stop, and little Alaric languidly blinked open his cornflower blue eyes, a tiny yawn stretching his even tinier mouth wide. Lily carefully, if a bit stiffly, positioned his body until he was sitting up on her knee, with her hand holding him up from drooping forward and supporting his head from under his chin. Those little eyes rolled around the room, as if he was trying to look at everything at once, but was too tired to do so.

Lily grinned, and slowly rubbed his tiny back, patting gently every second or so to get any wind up. She was a bit stiff and cack-handed, afraid she might hurt him or damage something, but eventually she was slowly able to build up a nice rhythm, beginning to relax when Alaric didn't so much as cry.

"Here, don't want him to sick up on our Harry," James murmured, tucking the little red and gold burping rag they'd bought before they went into hiding, over her hand like a little apron.

Lily shot him a smile when, after a few more thumps, Alaric gave a garbled burp and a small spindle of undigested milk spilled out from his lips and on the top of where her hand was, buried under the rag. She swiped his face clean with the rag, then set it down, away from Harry and off the clean sheets. Mipsy had only changed them an hour or two ago, and she really didn't want to bother the little elf with repeating tasks.

"Do you think Harry's hungry, too?" James asked, grappling with the swaddling blankets around their youngest son to get him free. He'd begun to redden in the face and tense every few seconds, which could only mean one thing, and it was not something Lily or James were looking forward to.

"He'll let us know when he wants a feed," Lily assured him, smiling softly as she gently tipped Alaric back into her arms and cuddled him to her chest, tucking herself back into her shirt. He was already fast asleep, and adorably so, lips pursed and paper-thin eyelids fluttering delicately. She didn't think she'd ever get over finally seeing her baby boys, having them in her arms after so long waiting. It really was her dream come true, honestly.

_Even if one of them could die._

_"Come on, let us in already! We want to see the new generation of Marauders, the prodigal sons! Don't start hogging them on us now, uncles have first priority for that kind of thing!"_ A very familiar voice barked through the door to their room, and Lily thought she could hear excited whispers even when James was snickering quietly beside her.

Obviously they'd been too impatient to wait for them, not that Lily had expected them to wait as long as they had in the first place. She'd known they'd barge in sooner or later, their excitement having gotten the best of them, and she was just glad that she'd been allowed to return herself to her modest state. Having a breast bared through the neck of a shirt wasn't something she was used to, after all, and it would have been an incredibly awkward situation if Sirius or anyone else had burst in while she was indisposed.

There'd been enough of that kind of pranking in their heyday at Hogwarts.

 _"Come on! You've already had them for nine months! Give over, it's time for the uncles to spoil their nephews!"_ Sirius shouted through the door, voice muffled by the excited murmuring of Remus and Peter, and the sturdy wood between them.

It wouldn't keep them out for long. Doors rarely ever did, and the girls in Gryffindor Tower couldn't count the times Sirius had been found sneaking in and out of the Girl's dorm after curfew, a broom tucked under an arm and a mischievous grin on his face, on all the hands in their half of the year group put together. It was part of their charm for being called the Marauders. Nothing stood in their way, not even the intricately spelled furniture.

James turned to stare at the door incredulously, a squirming and half naked Harry tucked awkwardly in his arms. Lily only just noticed the poor boy scowling up at his father, wriggling furiously to get comfortable and looking so close to crying from sheer frustration.

"And you wanted those three to celebrate the birth of your sons," said Lily, snorting.

James groaned pathetically. "Yeah, but why today? Why couldn't they come tomorrow at the very least? I told them to wait!"

"Oh, stop whinging and just open the door, before they break it down on us and we have to go shopping for a new one," Lily said, smiling with amusement. "And for God's sake, help the poor boy into a more comfortable position. He looks like he's going to cry!"

"Yes, dearest," James mumbled, and, awkwardly fumbling Harry more comfortably into the crook of his elbow, opened the door barely beating back the other Marauders.

Sirius practically pranced into the room, his eyes barely looking at James and instead going straight to the little boy in James's arms. He seemed to swoon at the sight. "Oh, he's got my cheeks!" He cried, gently poking at Harry's smooth, baby-soft round cheeks, and then feeling his own as if to compare them. "And my lips, and my nose, and my hair... Bloody hell! The kid's gonna grow up the spitting image of me! He's going to have a tough time beating the ladies and gents back with such a handsome face as this, I can just imagine it! I'll have to teach him the spells I used, nothing can keep them away otherwise."

James rolled his eyes good-naturedly and moved away from the door, ignoringSirius as he dogged his steps, and allowing poor Remus and Peter space to sidle into the crowded room. Peter hung awkwardly at the doorway though, a crooked smile playing on his plump face as he observed the wriggling and sleeping babies. He seemed unsure to be there, but no one paid attention to him, as they'd always done. Not with such new arrivals in their midst, anyway.

"Congratulations, Lily," said Remus softly, leaning down to press an affectionate kiss to Lily's cheek. He handed her a small bouquet of yellow Chrysanthemums, to her surprise, as she hadn't noticed them when he'd come in. "They're absolutely perfect and healthy, the spitting image of James and yourself."

Alaric stirred in her arms as she grasped the bouquet and brought it to her face to examine them, sniffing at them delicately with a soft, touched smile on her face. "These are absolutely beautiful, Remi, thank you! It's been a long time since I've gotten flowers from any one of you," she mused happily, placing them on the table beside her bed, well within reach and sight, so Sirius wouldn't transfigure them without her knowing it. "And those transfigured fish heads don't count," she said pointedly, spotting said man opening his mouth as if to correct her.

Remus grinned, looking decidedly handsome and young with his delighted, lightly tanned face - despite the scars lingering from his previous 'Furry' changes, he looked completely at ease. "Well, you always did say you loved the way fish looked - elegant, I believe you said. So what do you expect to happen when you say something like that in front of Sirius?" He asked, quirking an eyebrow. "And besides, that was ages ago -"

"Only a year!" Lily protested.

"- so you shouldn't keep going back to it and trying to keep punishing all of us over something that happened in the past. Aren't you the one that keeps telling us to forgive and forget?" Remus prodded, a hint of mischief sparkling in his pale green eyes.

Lily scowled up at him, though the twitching of her lips belied her anger. "Well, yes," she conceded reluctantly. "But he really scarred me for life, I hope you know. I can't even look at red roses the same way without cringing, and they were my favorite kind of flower! Now all I see are gaping Codfish heads in their places."

"I don't think that's quite normal, Lily-flower. Think someone's been at the pain potions a little too much," said Sirius humorously, giving a harsh barking laugh that warmed Lily's smile significantly, despite his trickery in the past years she'd had to put up with him. He nudged James's side with his elbow at seeing Lily's smile, feigning shock. "D'you see that, Prongs? Lily-flower's smiling - at _me_! Ye Gods! What have I done to have deserved such a beautiful sight? Doth mine eyes truly deceive me? For surely this is some trickery designed to entrap me in some wicked spell!" He cried dramatically, flinging a hand to his forehead dramatically.

James rolled his eyes, although Lily was pleased to see that he was grinning. "Shut your gob, Padfoot, it's not that rare," he said good-naturedly, before he visually calmed himself and gave them serious looks. "Anyway, Lily and I have something we need to tell you. You and Remus both, actually, and it's very important," he admitted quietly. Harry cooed gently in his arms, but was happy to just lie there and blink lazily around the room, only focusing on his father every once in a while.

Remus's smile turned down so fast Lily thought she'd imagined him smiling just before, and his eyebrows creased up in concern. "What is it?" He asked worriedly, his concerned personality juxtaposed by Sirius's grinning, shining face beside him. "Is something the matter? I've already scented the boys, they're incredibly healthy - are they falling ill? Is it Lily? What is it, James?" He implored.

James barely noticed poor Peter Pettigrew lingering at the doorway, his attention so inwardly fixed on his and Lily's decision that, if he'd paused and finally noticed the rat Animagus, he would have known that it would've sparked something hazardous within the man to ignore him so thoroughly. Something severely detrimental to the health of their little family. But alas, his foresight wasn't as great as Albus Dumbledore's, and therefore, his mind wasn't as plagued by as many possibilities as the wise old man.

"Lily and I have thought about this for a long time," said James, glancing from his smirking wife, to his two best friends, with a slightly nervous smile. Realization seemed to be dawning in Sirius's eyes, although Remus wasn't far behind in the assumption either. "And we'd finally come to the decision that... Well, Sirius, Remus, we'd like you both to be -"

"YES!" Sirius shouted before James could even hope to finish, bodily throwing himself at his friend with tears of happiness in his sparkling grey eyes. He grabbed at James's biceps desperately, being careful of the frowning baby Harry cradled at his elbow, so utterly happy that his face seemed forever stretched into a grin. "You have no idea how happy you've made me, James - and you, Lily, you as well! Not only am I an uncle, but now I'm a _Godfather_ , too! I promise you I'll protect them with my life, I swear it to you, James, I won't let anything happen to them! They'll both be spoiled bloody rotten, like the little princes they are!"

"You can only be Godfather to one child, Sirius," said Lily pointedly, before allowing her lips to pull up into a kind grin. "And we've made you Harry's Godfather, and Remus is Alaric's," she said, a large, warm smile on her beatific face as she watched Sirius practically bounce on the balls of his feet in ecstatic happiness. Remus was stunned into silence. "You two are the people we trust the most to take care of our babies if we aren't here anymore, and there aren't any other two people in the world strong enough to deal with any Potter tantrums. We trust you both, we love you, and you both deserve to be their Godfathers. If for no other reasons, then because you're our family," she said softly.

Tears glimmered in Remus's eyes, and before Lily knew it, she - and subsequently Alaric, too - were pulled into the circle of the Werewolf's strong arms, and words of gratitude were being whispered fervently into her ear. It was hard for her not to snap at him for thinking that they'd disregard him so completely just for his condition. Remus was practically the reason Lily had even survived in the Marauders circle- he had warned her when they were planning on pranking others, or herself, and was always there to help her out of a problem the other two had caused if she couldn't find the counter-curse or solution.

He was the wise friend, aside from Alice, that Lily had always gone to when she needed to just talk and for someone to listen. And there wasn't a better person to comfort either of her sons when they needed it, because she knew that she had a short temper and was incredibly impatient, and they needed someone with a cool head to explain certain things to them. She could only do so much.

Remus was that person. Because for all she knew, if she ended up dying in some way with James surviving, her husband would botch up the simplest of things with their children without her there to prevent it. She didn't even want to think about her husband explaining sex to her children. It just made her cringe to think of all the outdated, crappy advice James would give them to pick up girls, and then her sons going out to deploy those crappy pick-up lines and moves on poor girls.

No, Remus was the best choice for being a Godfather.

And Sirius... Sirius was the best choice for relating to her sons on a more playful, childish level. Every child needs that every once in a while to remain sane, especially since she didn't know how long the war around them would go on for, and happiness and innocence was rarely a thing that lasted long in such a thing. Too much blood, death and torture, and especially in the war with Voldemort.

The words of the prophecy ran around in her mind, and her sons' names trailed it.

"There's nothing to thank me for," she whispered, all at once coming back to herself. Remus finally fell silent, but she could sense that he was still crying. "The boys'll need you when things get rough. Especially if James and I have another one of our arguments," she muttered wryly.

Remus pulled back, and a watery smile fixed itself onto his weary face. "Sometimes I think you two will end up tearing each other's heads off, but then you end up hugging each other and talking sweetly like neither of you hadn't just been thinking of murder. You both go from one extreme to the next in mere seconds," he said, sniffling lightly and forcefully blinking away his tears. "It's been years since you've gotten together, and I still don't know how you manage to lie next to each other at night."

"Or on top of each other," said Sirius coyly, winking from his spot in front of James, hands briefly forgotten in their outstretched position to pick a squirming Harry up. "Lils is probably a wildcat in bed, all that red hair and fiery temper. A riot between the sheets, I'd think! Am I right Jamesy-? _Oi_!" he exclaimed, rubbing at his arm indelicately as he gawked up at his friend. "Why the bloody hell did you go and do that? That hurt!"

"Stop talking about my wife like that and I'll stop," James retorted heatedly, a scowl slowly darkening his face. But then he managed a suspiciously inconspicuous nod in Sirius's direction that made Lily think that perhaps James had said as much, anyway. The exasperated look on Remus's face said as much, anyway.

"I've got to go," snarled Peter suddenly, an ugly expression twisting his mottled red face viciously as he abruptly spun his hefty weight around and disappeared from the doorway, stomping an angry path down the stairs that made the floorboards wobble underneath their feet ominously.

James made an odd noise in the back of his throat, reminiscent to a challenged grunt of a stag deer, and made to go charging after their plump friend with all the ignited temper of a Potter, face creased in concern and not a little amount of anger. "Peter, get your hairy arse back here, you slippery little rat!" he yelled.

They heard the front door of their cottage open and slam shut.

Sirius, scatter-brained as he was before his newborn Godson, fortunately managed to grab a tight hold of James's arm before he could dart after the heavy blonde and show him what a really mad Potter could do. "Calm down, James! He's not in his right mind - he doesn't know what he's doing! Calm yourself!" he bellowed, yanking him even further back when the man attempted to slip out of his hold. James turned to him furiously. "Your wife's just given birth to your children, and my _newborn Godson's_ in your bloody arms - they don't need your melodramatic shite right now!"

"What is he playing at? What right does he have to run out on us at a time like this?" James demanded lividly, looking almost gigantic in comparison to his tiny son laying uncomfortably in his arms. "His nephews just came into this world, and the first thing he does is run out on them at a little bit of favoritism? The little worm!"

"He's having a tough time with his mum, Mate," Sirius said sympathetically. "His head hasn't been on right for weeks, ever since she'd been admitted there with chest problems. She's been in St. Mungos for nearly two months now, and the Healers keep saying her condition's getting worse. Each time he visits her, he keeps coming back more and more upset. Just give him some time to sort things through, then you can go blasting down his door for answers. You know what he's like when he's angry - like squeezing blood out of a fucking rock, he is, despite how gullible and - well, stupid, he is."

James teetered on the edge of running after the rat Animagus, looking ready to bolt even with Harry in his arms. But then he deflated, and nodded in reluctant acceptance, an edge of bitterness in his hazel eyes. "Yeah, you're probably right, Pads. But that still doesn't excuse his behavior," he muttered darkly. After a briefly tense silence, he let out a sharp sigh and shook his head roughly, wild brown curls flying around here and there around his glasses. "Can you hold Harry while I go sort us out something in the kitchen? I don't know about you three, but I'm feeling a little hungry and could do with a good, strong cuppa - or three. Watching Lily birth the twins nearly twenty four hours straight took a lot out of me," he said, laughing a little hollowly.

Sirius's face immediately expanded in a wide grin and he rushed to hold out his arms - a little bit too big of a cradling position for a baby - the precise size to let Harry plummet straight through to the floor, to be exact. James awkwardly and painstakingly positioned them in a bit closer to his chest and showed him how to hold Harry before he could drop him. It was like teaching a spider to tap-dance, but then, the spider would have had more of an idea than Sirius.

"Oh, give the Godfather his Godson already! Merlin's saggy bollocks, you've already been hogging him for nine months, let me have my Godson for at least a little bit!" Sirius growled playfully, sporting a suspiciously wide and manic grin that made Lily feel a little nervous to see. When a quietly grumbling Harry was deposited in Sirius's arms, and quickly huddled to his chest protectively, James took off out of the room at an alarming speed.

For one gut-clenching moment, Lily almost thought that he was going to go after Peter, but when the front door didn't slam open and then shut like it did with Peter, and the Floo network didn't activate, she knew James had been truthful. He was in the kitchen, most likely eating all the leftover chocolate cake Mipsy had made near two days before. The House-elf was always leaving them lovely little treats like that.

Suddenly, Sirius sniffed at the air around his head, though the waft of food couldn't have already climbed the stairs to them, as James wouldn't have started cooking - the man couldn't cook to save his life, after all, and Mipsy was busy at the Potter Manor readying the rooms for their arrivals at a later date. After a long moment, Lily had to hide a grin when Sirius's nose led him to the source of the smell, and she finally realized what it was; her darling little Harry.

Sirius grimaced in distaste, face awash with a paleness only a man could have when confronted with a soiled nappy. "Oi! James! Come change your bloody baby! He reeks!" He hollered, sticking his head out the doorway while holding Harry just a little away from his body so nothing . . . _icky_ would get on his new top grade Auror robes. Spell damage and blood was one thing, but knowing that baby feces had touched it - even if it was his Godson's, still made him want to set fire to everything and anything. Nothing would stop him from burning something with baby poo on it - even if he'd have to burn the only fastest racing broom in the world. Nothing was worth salvaging after... _that_ had gotten on it.

 _"What?"_ They barely heard James holler back over the toss and tumble of utensils and plates downstairs.

"I said come change your baby, you silly doe-eyed buzzard!" Sirius shouted back, looking a little awkward and uncertain with Harry writhing in his arms like a wriggling worm, clearly uncomfortable with having something so disgusting on his bum. Little uncomfortable noises escaped him every so often.

 _"Sorry, can't hear you!"_ sang James's voice through the floorboards, and both Lily and Remus had to pinch themselves to stop their laughter from exploding out of them. Sirius could get terribly offended at times, and then explosively defensive, especially if someone close to him laughed at something he deemed as horrible and was totally out of line. Jokes and fun aside, Sirius could be quite sensitive.

Sirius growled, sounding more like Padfoot than ever in that moment, and looked down at Harry with sparkling grey eyes and a smirk to match it. "Well, Pup, looks like we're already going to be spending some quality time together," he said, slowly beginning to not look so put out anymore. Harry cooed up at him quietly, cornflower blue eyes blinking heavily and lazily as he tried to lookup at Sirius - as if to figure out if the man was his father or not.

Sirius gave his little nose a tap, and his smirk widened at the tiny doe-eyed look that focused on his finger. "But just know that when you're old enough to understand things, I'm going to make sure that this memory haunts you 'til you're old and grey. I can't wait until your seventeenth birthday, I'll show every embarrassing memory I have of you then. This one's first though," he teased, and walked nimbly out into the hallway, no doubt in search of the nursery, still murmuring teasingly to little Harry.

"Are you sure you should let him go by himself?" Remus queried worriedly.

Lily opened her mouth to reassure him that Sirius was fine, when a suspicious crashing sound came from the nursery - sounding much too violent for comfort. " _Go!_ " She urged him, and Remus flew out of the room as if the hounds of Hell were biting at his feet, rocketing through the doorway and down the hallway in search of the cause of the crash.

Lily's heart pounded frantically in her chest, and she had to shush Alaric when he made a startled noise and wriggled on her chest, seeming to think her heart was pumping a bit too fast for his liking. "Hush, Love," she whispered into his soft fuzz of hair, pressing a loving kiss to his soft forehead as she waited impatiently. "Mummy needs to hear Uncle Remi."

 _"Just a few books and a lamp - they fell from the cupboard when he slipped on Harry's nappy! Nothing to worry about, Lily-flower! I've got it all from here!"_ She heard Remus yell not a minute later, and forced herself to relax into the pillows at her back, little Alaric finally settling in her arms and slowly falling back to sleep.

Nothing else suspiciously dangerous sounded from the nursery after that, and James was busy banging away downstairs in the kitchen, the shrieking of the kettle loud even from upstairs in their bedroom. She was finally left with peace after nearly two days of unbearable pain, her two precious babies in different rooms of the house and no longer inside her. It was an immense relief, but also not an altogether welcome one.

She expelled a long breath and shut her eyes tight. "We're going to need help, we can't do this alone," she whispered to herself. _Especially with the prophecy looming over us all,_ she thought despondently, and as if the world had heard her, an unexpected flash of lightning lit up her room, and a deep, rumbling clap of thunder sounded immediately from above. Rain built up from a slow drizzle, and began pouring down not a few seconds later, bringing with it the meditative sound of rain falling on the tin roof above her. She slowly relaxed further into her pillows, bringing baby Alaric with her, and turned her emerald gaze to the window to watch the rain fall.

Who knew how long it would be before Voldemort found them?

 _Not long enough_ , she thought, and finally allowed her tired eyes to drift shut into a much needed rest.


	3. He Who Must Not Be Named

** He Who Must Not Be Named **

_**Saturday, 31st of October, 1981.** _   
**Dining Room, the Doghouse.**

"Mmm, it's really, _really_ good, Lils," James lied expertly, grinning as widely and as charmingly as he could manage, as he continued carving up the slightly overcooked roast pork. It crackled uncertainly under the jerked sawing motions of his knife, and he hastened to shove the small bit that crumbled off into his mouth. The bitter tang of charcoal did its best to twist his face into a grimace, but he charged through the taste with a loyal affection for his wife - who truly did her best to fit the criteria of a good mother; cooking when she had no talent in the kitchen. "Absolutely delicious, babe! You make your mother's food taste like ash in comparison!" he praised, tipping his head in an exaggerated nod that he hoped wasn't his downfall.

Lily sighed wearily, plonking down into her seat in between the highchairs that housed her boys. They were lucky their dinner was still mushy peas and carrots, for if they had tasted the burnt meat and slightly under-cooked corn and beans, their honesty would kick in - and their dishes would be across the room in seconds.

"You hate it," she said.

"It's a little on the, er, crispy side of things," James conceded hesitantly, and then winced when Lily shot him a poisonous glare as she helped little Harry and Alaric grip their spoons and guide it to their mouths. "But I do like it, Lily! I swear, it isn't nearly as bad as you think! It's only 'cause you haven't tried it yet that you're judging it - aren't you the one that always tells me not to judge a book by its cover?" He implored, trying hard to think of a way to get himself away from the trap that was trying appease his wife, and being honest.

Lily gave him a flat look. "You can cook next time Mipsy's sick, then, if you think my cooking's a little on the _crispy_ side of things," she said through gritted teeth, huffing with annoyance at him as she forced herself to split her attention between her giggling sons, one of which was poking his tongue out at her cheekily - mushed peas somehow already spread all over his chubby cheeks.

"Your cooking may be a bit more chewy than it should be, but at least it's edible," James grumbled, spearing a piece of pork on his fork and carefully chewing the sharp bits of crackling. "Mine's like eating sludge, and not the okay kind from made from edible food that's been pureed. It's like acid. Remember that spaghetti I tried to make, back when we took care of your parents' house when they went away?"

"Where you burnt the pasta to a paste at the bottom of the pot and then tried to banish it, only to banish the entire bottom, and then set fire to the sauce and almost the entire kitchen?" She asked, arching an eyebrow as she dabbed at Alaric's messy face with her napkin. "Yeah, you could say I remember it. It was my father's favorite pot to use for soup, and I didn't hear the end of it for years, even after he got that new pot he loves."

"So, see, your cooking's so much better than mine!" James said, nodding his head enthusiastically as Lily glanced at him shrewdly. He held up a large piece of pork on his fork, and made a show of eating it whole for her, enjoying the way those pretty emerald eyes sparkled with amusement as the incredibly noisy crunching of his teeth against glass-like crackling, sounded in the dining room. His aching gums were worth the smile that glittered in those eyes. "So mu'h be'er!" he enthused, though his voice was incredibly muffled and shaky with pain.

 _It's worth it for her,_ he thought firmly, and then had to forcefully ignore the prickling of tears in his eyes, as a shard of crackling dug very painfully into the sensitive gum just behind his front tooth.

Lily burst out laughing, throwing her head back mirthfully as James tried hard to conceal his wincing. And, after a moment of watching their mother laugh without pause, both Alaric and Harry let out beautiful melodious giggles and squeals, clapping their gooey pea and carrot covered hands excitedly as they did so. Green and orange globs of food splattered the floor and table, but Lily was laughing too much to even notice. Not that James didn't, but he made as much mess as his two sons did, so he could get away with overlooking the mess.

Little Harry looked so much like his dear mother, his big emerald eyes glimmering with joy and his pouty lips stretched wide in a grin, that James couldn't help but feel a little tearful with pride. He still hadn't gotten over the fact that this was his family - his children and wife. It was getting harder and harder to imagine life before them, not that he imagined that much - but he just couldn't stop remembering the fun times he'd had with Sirius, Remus and Peter, and then comparing them to watching his two sons grow and learn new things - that they both loved him cuddling them before bed, and that Harry loved Lily's kisses and hugs more than his. That Harry loves animals and drawing and helping his mum in the kitchen, and that Alaric loves building things with his little building blocks and knocking them down almost immediately after.

His Alaric was more like him in ways Lily complained about - the matching messy black hair atop both babies heads not withstanding. It was like complimenting himself when he praised his eldest son. Alaric had his hazel eyes, his short fingers, his nose, chin and even the little double-jointed elbow that Lily sometimes found freaky. It was an oddly prideful moment that James only dared to share with Remus and Sirius, a father's pride of having his son turn out like him.

Lily, James knew, was very happy to have at least one of her children take after her, as well. Even if she had two sons, and not the daughter she'd always dreamed of having with him. Harry had her beautiful emerald eyes, high and pretty cheek bones and pale skin, and even her pouty lips. He was also very small for a boy - very delicate in the bones department. He looked almost dainty in comparison to Alaric, it was in his height when he toddled beside his brother, and especially when they were both on their practice brooms.

Harry was a natural speed demon, while Alaric was more of a Keeper, or maybe a Beater, hovering in one spot and keeping track of what was going on around him. James couldn't really draw any matches for Quidditch yet, Lily was extremely wary of letting her sons on brooms for too long, but he was slowly wearing out Lily's resolve with little quips about Quidditch here and there. He, as a Chaser for Gryffindor, couldn't wait for his sons to play their matches at Hogwarts - he already had flags and banners up in the attic waiting to be used.

Lily found it adorable, but of course she didn't say that to his face - delicate manliness and all that.

Finally able to swallow the lump of shards that was roast pork, James rasped, "It's not that funny," before grabbing his drink and swinging back the water in one continuous gulp. It soothed the tender aches and hurts in his mouth, but it wasn't enough to get all the tiny, crunched up shards in his mouth. No, those were stuck in his teeth and gums, weren't they. Hazardous to his health, they were.

"Oh, but it is!" Lily disagreed with a chipper grin, looking just that little bit happier after having an unintentional bout of revenge. "You seem to think that I can't tell when you're lying to me, but what you don't realize is that every wife knows everything about her husband. I especially know when you lie. It's really quite obvious when you do, actually. And honestly, I'm a bit disappointed in Sirius and Remus for not picking up on it earlier, even after your friendship for however many years."

"Oh?" James muttered, resolutely dropping his knife and fork onto the table and refilling his glass, not deigning his mangled dinner another look. He'd just get Albus to send him a House-elf bearing supper later - when Lily went off to bed.

"You exaggerate everything you do," Lily told him, still grinning that evil little grin at him. He wanted to kiss it off of her. "Especially when you want to convince someone of something suspicious, like my horrible cooking. I'm quite surprised how well you can keep a lie with Sirius, much less Remus! It must take extra work for you to do so!"

"You have no idea how hard it is to lie to someone that can hear your heartbeat if they listened hard enough," James mumbled, rolling his eyes at her as he sipped at his drink, absently trying to get the shards out of his gums with his tongue. "But you forget, I don't really lie all that often."

Lily raised an eyebrow, an insufferably knowing smirk stretching her pouty red lips. "How about the night the twins were born, hmm? You lied about going to the bathroom to sneak out and Fire-call your friends," she said, absentmindedly cleaning Harry's little, long-fingered hands with a clean napkin. "And what about last week, hmm? You told me you were going to visit Albus, but instead you went to Diagon Alley to order the new broom they have, and the newest training brooms for toddlers, as well. Then you lied to Frank, to Sirius, and yet again me when you said you were going to have a lie in, which must mean in your words that you want to have a drink or two. Shall I continue, or have you gotten the idea?"

"No, I got it," James grumbled darkly, staring at the table with a tight-lipped scowl. "So, alright, I lie a couple times a week, but that's nothing compared to what you do. You're like the epitome of a sneaky little Slytherin!"

That apparently took Lily aback, as she was too surprised to continue cleaning Harry of the gooey food. She didn't notice as his tiny hands grabbed at the napkin and continued rubbing it between his palms, watching with slowly drooping eyes as the soft tissue cleaned his hands of the goop. "And what have I done to upset you, oh-so gallant and noble One?" she asked tersely.

"I tried to give you a surprise chocolate basket when you were on your monthly horror days, and you yelled at me for calling you fat!" James exclaimed exasperatedly, throwing his hands into the air incredulously. "I did no such thing, and I had to spend the next three nights suffering on the couch, tending to both Harry and Ric when they woke up in the middle of the night for it!"

"Those chocolates were nice," Lily mumbled, flushing a pretty red from her lightly freckled cheeks to the tips of her ears. After a long moment of having James glare at her, she finally sighed and reluctantly nodded. "Okay, I'm sorry for doing that, but it did seem pretty fishy to me when you gave me all those chocolates. You had that weird, guilty expression on your face that instantly set off my temper."

"That's because I'd broken one of your aunt's vases that day and I was anticipating you tearing my head off," James pointed out indelicately, getting up to clear off the table. "I'd wanted to avoid as much carnage as I could, and decided that since you like chocolate and were most likely in pain from cramps, that I'd get you an entire basket full of Honeydukes finest - those fudge chocolates you love so much. Cost a pretty Galleon, mind, but at least you ate it all."

"You'll have to get me another basket soon, because those were pretty good," she said cheekily, grinning at her mildly affronted husband as she stood up herself, and wiped off any crumbs she may have gotten on her shirt. Looking at her sleeping babies, who'd had such an exciting day playing around with their new brooms and their uncles, and were now all tuckered out from it, her grin softened into a heart-melting smile. She quickly cleaned them both off - taking the dirty napkin still in Harry's grasp, and moving Alaric's fingers from a glop of food, and began carefully unbuckling them from their highchairs.

"They asleep?" James asked her quietly, scraping the food off of both his and Lily's plates with as little noise as he could make it.

Lily smiled over her shoulder at her husband, but turned back to untangling Harry's tiny feet from the chair sockets. She picked him up gently, supporting his lolling head in the crook of her neck as she tucked him to her body. She could just cry every time her little boy cuddled into her; his little arms tightening around her neck and his face pressing into her shoulder. He made a little sound then, and she pressed a loving kiss to his temple. "Hush, Harry, Mummy's got you," she whispered into his hair.

"Do you need a hand with him?" James asked quietly, sidling up to Alaric's highchair to work him out like a human puzzle. At Lily's nod, he began untangling their eldest from his own restraints. He was definitely the messier of the two, that much could be said, as James lifted him up and revealed the mess of goopy food that was slopped all down his front and sides. James sighed and quietly muttered a cleaning charm, before tucking his now clean little boy to his chest and nuzzling into the soft fluffy hair atop his little noggin.

"Sirius and Remus are coming around tomorrow afternoon," Lily reminded James quietly, a soft grin on her face that spoke of untold horrors for the twosome the next day. James listened with amusement. "Something about celebrating a late Halloween with the twins before leaving to go off on one of their holidays again. I wanted to set up a little surprise for them --"

The sharp sound of wards screeching their protest cut through James'swords, something in all their two years of living in Godric's Hollow, they hadn't ever done. James gasped in horror as he caught sight of the front door, at the opposite end of the hallway. It had begun to crackle and smoke around the blurred and reddened edges, shards and splinters of wood pinging out of the woodwork and hitting the floor like bullet-sized shrapnel. All signs of an explosive curse working its way through thankfully heavily warded wood. He froze in absolute shock, heart racing faster than a Nimbus and tattooing into the skin of his chest like a rogue Bludger.

"James, the boys!" Lily cried frantically over the screeching wards and crying toddlers, tugging furiously on the sleeve of his arm desperately to get him to move. "We have to get them away from here! It's _him_! We need to get away! We need to use the Portkeys!" she yelled.

Disjointedly, James began to stumble forward. "Get upstairs!" he said, before hurriedly tugging Lily from the kitchen doorway and to the unfortunately placed landing before the front door, where the stairs connected the levels together.

It wouldn't take Voldemort long to work his way through the layers of wards, and he couldn't let Lily or the boys near him when he did. He hastily shoved a sniffling and crying Alaric into her arms, ignoring the way she jerked back in shock and terror, and pushed her up the first step. Harry's watery green eyes peered at him from the crook of her elbow with terrified wonderment, a direct juxtaposition of his mother's horrified realization and Alaric's all-encompassing terror.

"You need to get upstairs, use the Portkey as soon as you can - don't worry about me, Lily!" he yelled, shaking her by her trembling shoulders as she sobbed and tried to grab him with a scrabbling hand, her other arm fighting to keep a hold on her screaming child and squirming son. "He's here for the boys, we need to get them to safety. I'll hold him off as long as I can, but you need to go now!"

" _James!_ " Lily sobbed wretchedly, trying desperately to get the love of her life to go with her - to keep him with her and their children. " _Please,_ please come with me! Don't stay down here, he'll _kill_ you! He won't let you live - _please_! Please, don't do this to me!"

"I know," James whispered tearfully, looking terribly crushed and resolved to his fate even as the door gave a threatening groan behind them. Desperately, he ducked his head down to press an urgent kiss to her trembling, moist lips, sweeping his tongue lovingly into her mouth just this one last time. He pulled back when he heard the door behind him give another terrible groan - louder than the last. They were running out of time. "Go," he urged, pushing her away.

"James--" Lily tried again, crying desperate, terrified tears.

"GO!" James roared, and finally, _finally_ , Lily listened. She immediately turned and scrambled up the stairs, hands clutching her crying babies to her panting chest frantically as she made her way to safety. Her terrified emerald eyes stared down at her husband one last time as she reached the top, an overwhelming look of such love and fear in those emerald orbs that James almost bolted after her instead, before she was gone - running down the hallway and to a room at the furthest side of the house. It was the last sight he thought he would ever see, his beloved wife of four years running in horror with their two children, as the Dark Lord Voldemort came crashing down on their door to kill them.

It was one last sight he would gladly take to his grave, if he could only stop Voldemort from succeeding in killing his family.

He spun around, wand at the ready and aimed in Voldemort's general direction, as the front door gave one final groan, before the wood split directly in the center and was flung away in an explosive shower of splinters and chunks that sliced through the walls around him like hot knives through butter. James was already ready for that, spitting out a shield with Auror-sharpness before the wooden spikes could harm him, and he waited with the steady thrum of battle adrenaline in his blood as the misty fog of their failing wards and the residue of the spell began to clear away to see their attacker. To see _him_.

In the unnaturally dark shadows of their doorstep, raven haired head bowed low and two gleaming red eyes peering out menacingly, stood Lord Voldemort. Long, dark robes clung to his slender figure almost like a second skin, of which was made up of six feet, and blended all too well into the shadows edging the crumbling doorway. His skin was an alabaster pale, and his features were most handsome and charming, if it weren't for the twisted and dark light swirling in those scarlet eyes that glared up at him most malignantly.

James knew enough of Voldemort not to attack immediately. That plan of attack always failed magnificently, but that didn't stop him from casting another shielding charm and silently attempting to stick another protective ward on the stairs behind him. However, his memory of wards was thin, and the web that crawled from his wand was shredded the moment his memory failed him. He snarled, and raised his head proudly, in a move reminiscent of the Stag he in his heart.

"James Potter, we meet again at last," said Voldemort in a slow, haunting voice, thin lips twisting into a cruel smirk that had James's innards twisting uncomfortably. But however much it felt like barbed wire in his belly, he stayed firm before the enemy. "You've done such a remarkable job at hiding from me, for being so foolhardy and dimwitted as they say. How long has it been... Almost three years since we last had a chat, was it? Why, I am as surprised as you are to finally be here before you. I am almost willing to bet that you didn't expect the _rat_ in that pathetic Order of yours to have betrayed you to be so close to your heart. Enough to betray your location to your enemies."

"Well, guess who's off my Christmas card list," James growled through his teeth, hardly attempting a sharp smile - only to let it fall flat into a dark scowl. "I'll be putting rat traps everywhere after this."

"And that would be the twisted sense of humor making its appearance. Hmm, yes, Wormtail told me as much would happen as soon as you were brought to heel," said Voldemort, his smirk widening just a touch as James bristled in anger. "Am I too late for supper? Oh, dear, have the children already been put to bed?" he asked, feigning innocent curiosity. However, that was ruined by the dark shadow that haunted his red eyes. "How sweet. But I have yet to meet the young ones in all their time of living a hidden life. I believe I shall go and introduce myself --"

"Don't you dare try it," James growled, allowing more than a thread of magic to thrum to life in his wand. "I'll kill you where you stand."

Voldemort let out a high, crackling, ice cold laugh that churned the contents of James's stomach, although no humor but a dark spark of enjoyment flitted to life in his eyes. "You and your Order have tried that already, James. Many, _many_ times," he said with dark amusement, and stepped forward. His robes crackled and clawed along the floor like blades over stone. "I am far mightier in power and possess a great deal more cunning than that old fool, Dumbledore, can ever hope to achieve, and I shall be your child's doom. However, which one, I am uncertain as to say. I suppose the both of them will have to do. Now step aside, or join those whom have already deemed themselves unworthy of living."

"I will not let you hurt them!" James snarled, and cast the first spell that came to mind as his heart jack-rabbited in his chest - which just so happened to be _Stupefy_.

Voldemort let out another harsh cackle, and with a deft flick of his wand, the _Stupefy_ sailed straight back at James's chest and threw him, tumbling painfully, to the landing beside the lovely looking honeysuckle wooden railing, wand slipping uselessly from slack fingers.

Voldemort immediately began to gracefully ascend the stairs, aiming a well targeted kick at the fallen James's ribs. The man seemed dead for all of the noise he made at the hit. "I told you to step aside, _fool,_ " he sneered at him as he swept by. "And now you will have to live a life of blame, heart and mind heavy with the burden of being a spectacular failure at protecting your _beloved_ ones. It is almost sweeter than having the honor to kill you, but, no matter."

Laughing coldly with satisfaction at that perceived justice, Voldemort arrogantly swept his sharp gaze along the rows of closed doors revealed to his eyes. It was almost too obvious which room he would have to invade, as almost as soon as he neared the last door in the hallway, he could hear two children crying inside and a young woman cursing vividly under her breath, repeating a phrase over and over. Most likely an activation code for a Portkey. It was almost too bad they didn't work, now wasn't it.

Wards were a wonderful thing when one paid attention.

Smirking, he swished his wand at the presumably locked and warded door, and watched in dark delight as it flew off its hinges without protest and slammed into something solid with an enormous tumbling, smashing sound. There in the Potter's nursery, Lily Potter screamed in fear as she and her children were revealed, and there, Voldemort stalked in with a deadly grace, wand held almost lazily in hand.

"NO! NOT MY CHILDREN, PLEASE! NO, HAVE MERCY! HAVE MERCY!" Lily Potter screamed desperately, throwing herself before the two adjoined cots filled with quietly crying and sniffling children. She went to flick her wand at him, the tip already glowing blue with a spell, but with a smirk that spoke levels of his confidence, Voldemort merely swished his own wand and sent it flailing into the air, where with a well aimed curse, sent the Willow wood snapping in half to reveal the hidden core within and flying to join the rubble off to the side. Lily sobbed brokenly.

"Now why would I wish to allow the very child that is prophesied to defeat me, to live?" Voldemort questioned her, almost lackadaisically. "That would just defeat the purpose of my little visit here, now wouldn't it. Your dear husband has already paid the price of his stupidity, are you willing to do the same?"

"JAMES!" Lily screamed, trembling so violently her knees threatened to give way, that Voldemort almost laughed with delightful anticipation in watching proud Lily Potter fall to her knees before him. "No! He can't be dead, _no_...!" she sobbed, shaking her head violently. Her violent fiery hair was cast around her in tangled, distressed curtain that almost hid her wet face from his view.

"Oh, he most certainly is, my dear girl, he is," Voldemort crooned, smirking cruelly at her sniveling cries as she continued to refute him. "He was felled by his own curse, struck down right on the staircase before I could reach you. But you must certainly be proud of him. After all, to die for ones own family is the greatest honor a Gryffindor can ever achieve. Little Alice Longbottom is busy discovering this for herself elsewhere, under the care of Bellatrix and my loyal servants."

"You're a disgusting parasite, Tom, and I hope you die the most painful death in all the years of this world!" Lily spat hatefully, glaring furiously at him with those lovely emerald eyes, which looked even better with streaming tears than they were staring at him defiantly. They would make such a lovely trophy on his wall.

The smirk slowly faded from Voldemort's face at hearing that thrice blasted name, and he straightened to a stiff point, glowering down at her with fierce, scarlet eyes. "I grow weary of listening to you speak, Mudblood," he said darkly. "Remove yourself from the children's presence, and I may yet let you live --"

" _STUPEFY!_ " snarled Lily, flinging a hand at him that glowed bright red from within with the same spell her husband had used. It was pure instinct that drove her magic to charge - a mother's instinct to protect her young.

Voldemort frowned and just as easily sent the spell rebounding back to her, watching motionlessly as she was thrown to the side and left to crumple uselessly into a pile of limbs by her defenseless children's cots. " _Gryffindors_. Such a predictable, useless lot they are," he sneered. "Although, wandless magic... Such a rare occurrence among our people, even amongst the purest of our bloods. To have been a Muggleborn and have access to that talent... She would have been an asset to my army, had she the brains to accept my offer. Nevertheless, this is not what I came here for," he muttered inanely to himself, advancing further into the room to peer disdainfully into the cots, now that their parents were unconscious and out of the way.

Two pairs of eyes stared back at him. One set, a teary and fearful pair of hazel, and the other, the beautiful emerald of Lily Potter, so deliciously glowing with fear and thrumming with life and power that it almost made him quiver in delight. It was that child - he could tell by how brave it was being despite being overwhelmed by fear itself. He could practically feel the potential power radiating from his tiny body at this distance alone - so delicate and small, yet so full of defiance and vibrance it was almost astounding. A perfect mixture of his mother and father, that it almost sickened him.

A deadly smirk stretched those thin lips upward. He would snuff out that defiant life, just like he did the Potters before them.

"I suppose you want me to leave you and your family be, child?" he sneered at it. The boy watched him with those unnerving eyes, almost too focused on him to be at all comfortable. "What could you do if I murdered your dear Mudblood Mummy in front of you, oh prophesied one? Or your pathetic little brother?"

The boy jerked in place as if it actually understood, green eyes swiveling to look at his brother and then back to him owlishly. Voldemort almost cackled when the boy shook his head furiously, those spitfire eyes stabbing anger up at him even as he willingly signed himself up for death. It seemed the boy knew what was expected of him, then.

And it was right for it to do so. All things would bow and scrape to his every whim eventually. The tipping point to his scales would be the deaths of the powerful and influential Potter family - amongst others, he was sure.

"You will more than do to satisfy this Prophecy, child," he sneered, and leveled his wand right between its eyes. It stared up at the glowing tip of his wand as if confused, and the real enjoyment of the situation began to filter in as those eyes stared entranced into the glowing light of death. "And that is why you must die. Enjoy your death more than your life, little one, for surely it will last far longer than you have lived. Rest assured that your putrid little family will join you soon. _AVADA KEDAVRA!_ " he roared, cackled gleefully even as he was pouring pure malignant power through his wand.

Voldemort allowed a grin of pure delight to shape his face as the sheer mightiness of his spell obliterated the child - or, that's what it should have done, had it not intercepted some foreign source of power equal in its strength and force in its path. "No! This cannot happen!" he snarled, daring to pour as much power as he could possibly spare into the force of the spell. "AVADA KEDAVRA!"

Finally, his magic seemed to move through the alien shield, it finally began to move - but backward - it was moving back to _him!_

" _NO!_ " he roared once more, real fear beginning to worm into his heart as that deadly green fountain slithered back towards him with dangerous accuracy, aided by the power backed behind it and the strange magic it had intercepted. His hand shook under the onslaught of such strength, and he watched in horror as his deadly wand began to creak and crack under his tense fingers. "THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE!" he shrieked - and his agonized scream rent the magically charged air as that deadly spell smothered him in a glowing green light, the sheer might of the spell tearing away the flesh of his body in tiny, minuscule increments and ripping away the shredded soul hiding within its depths.

The Dark Lord Voldemort allowed one last throat tearing scream, before he was no more than a robe and a crispy, smoking wand on the ground before Harry Potter's crib - a charcoal imprint on the floor that showed the true force of the impact. The remaining overwhelming power that had pushed the spell to kill its master rebounded once more off the burnt wand, and the ceiling above the cots burst open in an explosion of drywall, debris, many years worth of dust and tin. The children below screamed and wailed their pain as they were cut every which way and that, tin roofing slicing a jagged cut into palm of little Alaric Potter, and chunks of wall smacking little Harry Potter on his already tender, aching head.

The two children lay in their cots until help arrived, nearing two hours later in a brigade of seasoned Aurors. Both bloody, and exhausted into a restless sleep, they were found by a fearful Severus Snape, of whom immediately contacted Albus Dumbledore of the situation and tended to an injured and unconscious Lily Potter. They were further forgotten until Sirius and Remus arrived, frantic with worry and panicking at the sight of an unconscious James lying still on the stairs.

No one knew what happened that night, aside from what little James and Lily Potter could remember, as they cuddled and worried over the twins. But it was obvious by the jagged wound on the head of Harry Potter that positively reeked of insane amounts of Dark magic, and the shallow cut on the hand of little Alaric that whispered of loving magic, that whatever had become of Voldemort, no longer concerned the living.

_At least not yet._

Dumbledore watched Harry with worry as the little one cuddled into his mother's grasp, weary emerald eyes already drifting shut despite the traumatic experience he had just lived through. He was exhausted, his magical core strained and wrung dry of almost any magic, and the poor boy was covered in cuts, dust and fine shards of tin and roofing material. Alaric, on the other hand, was held safely in Remus's arms, perfectly healthy aside from the unhealthy amount of stress from the events of the night - James being too injured to hold either one of his son's whilst a small team of Auror's accompanied him to St. Mungos.

Unfortunately, Dumbledore knew exactly what had to be done. They couldn't allow Harry to come into even more danger to their world - he had to be protected at all costs, and the Death Eaters were bound to be restless and driven by mad shock that their Master was gone. They'd attack anywhere and at will, and they'd try and attack Harry.

Dumbledore couldn't allow that to happen. Harry would be safe, by will or by magic, the boy would endure and regain his health and power. He would need it for the future, which as of that moment, remained to be seen as uncertain.

 


	4. The Greatest Mistake

** The Greatest Mistake **

_ **Wednesday, 19th of April, 1983.**_  
**The Informal Dining Room, Potter Manor.**

"They're growing up too bloody fast for my old eyes to cope," said Sirius glumly, watching gloomily as a happily chattering Harry offered up a box of extra bits and bobs for building blocks up to his older brother, Alaric, of which was pouting at the ridiculously bland, but extravagantly built castle at his tottering feet. Empty handed once more, Harry turned back to his painting with an exuberant hum of pleasure, smiling as he took up a clean paint brush and dipped it s little roughly into a vivid green paint. "It was just yesterday they were crawling around in nappies and gumming away on absolutely everything, and now they're navigating the hallways of Potter Manor like they're about to go off venturing to Hogwarts! I mean, look at Harry go! He's only three and he's already coordinated with colors and painting like a pro! Not to mention Alaric," he grumbled.

"If you think that's bad, you should see them when they eat," said James wearily, watching his beautiful sons play together with a happiness that he himself had rarely had growing up. It wasn't because he'd been an only child, but because he'd been a snotty, bratty one until he'd turned seventeen. It wasn't until his parents' deaths that he'd wizened up and matured like he should have. It had been an extremely hard and bitter potion to swallow, and it was something he didn't wish on anyone - least of all his sons. He traded a grimace with Sirius. "They hardly ever make messes anymore, and they always trade the things they don't like, like reasonable adults. They're too grown up to be children, sometimes. It's almost unreal, I'm telling you now."

"They don't have any tantrums?" Remus asked disbelievingly, eyebrows raising in surprise.

"Oh, they do sometimes - well, Ric does mostly, anyway," James muttered, expelling a long, deep breath wearily and scratching at his prickly chin with roughly chewed fingernails. "Harry's too kindhearted and patient to ever really kick up a fuss whenever he's told no, but  _Ric_? Bloody forget about it, unless you want one hell of a migraine and a desperate need for a nice, dark and quiet room to soak in for hours. The set of pipes on him, he could outscream that Muggle Houston woman any day. Half the time it's like a bloody war zone when he kicks up a strop, like someone'd killed his puppy right before his eyes. Although, thankfully, whenever Ric does get a bit . . .  _unhappy_ ," he rushed the work out, wincing slightly as if the most recent screams were still echoing in his ears, even whilst in the near silent room. "Harry's always there to settle him down. It amazes me how he does it - not even Lily or I can calm him down when he gets so worked up. He just lays a hand on his brother's arm, and suddenly, it's like nothing ever happened."

"Must be a twin thing," said Sirius gruffly, though there was a ghost of a grin twitching the corners of his lips. "They can't be separated, or forced to be alone without the other, and they refuse to be - even on a genetic level. And if you ask me, and I know you are by that dazzling look in your eye, it's really quite barbaric to do so. Take Molly Weasley's twin sons for an example, they were separated for only half an hour before they each started screaming and begging to be 'put back together'. It was almost as if they'd both lost an arm each --"

"Sirius," James snapped with annoyance. It was the first sign in two weeks that he was becoming annoyed with Sirius's constant butting in on personal matters. One could only take so much nagging and hinting, after all. Even from close friends like Sirius. "I know what you think about sending Harry away, but it can't be helped if Lily and I think it's best. His core was almost drained in that fight with Voldemort, and it's barely done anything to replenish itself as it is! He needs to be somewhere without the constant drain of magic, where he can live without something sucking the life out of him every second he's near it! If we think he'd be better off getting love and the attention he deserves from someone else, then so be it. But it is  _none of your business_."

"He's my  _Godson!_ " Sirius snarled back, a hint of Padfoot curling back his upper lip to bare his slowly sharpening teeth. "Fair enough if you think he needs to go somewhere Magic-free without anything to harm him, but I'm his Godfather, I'm supposed to be there to help him whenever he needs it! You can't just promise him that he'll always have me and then tear him away from all of us - it's cruel and barbaric and it'll be the worst mistake you could ever make if you even tried it! You wanted me to be his Godfather, so  _let me!_ "

James sighed and shut his eyes, absently beginning to rub calloused fingers over his closed eyelids to ease the stress headache blooming there. "If Harry lived with you, Alaric would know and he'd throw tantrum after tantrum to go to yours to see his brother, therefore nullifying the exact reason Harry's even there and not here. Not to mention the fact that where you live isn't exactly a Magic-free zone, it's an enormous bachelor pad with not entirely... sterile things," he said quietly, a wry smile on his lips.

"I can fix it up easily enough," Sirius said confidently, grey eyes serious. "My days as a panty dropper can be put on hold for however long it takes for Harry to get better. I swear it, James. No magic would touch him in my apartment - Hell, I'll even move if I have to, out in the Muggle world where there's no magic at all!"

James's face twisted oddly, and even Remus seemed to glance at Sirius doubtfully, if a little disbelievingly at how committed the womanizing man was to his Godson. "That's not the point, Pads," he said. "It's not my decision where to put Harry, but it is my decision on the when. I can't have him at yours, especially as knowing that my youngest son is there getting love from someone so close to me and not directly from me makes my heart hurt. And it's not like I haven't been trying to convince Lily about it, but she won't budge - she's been convinced by Dumbledore that this is for the best.

"She wants him to go to Petunia's, and her reasons may seem a little bit sketchy, but from what I understand, she's hurting from the lack of communication with her sister and this is the perfect thing to solve her problems. She needed a reason to bridge the gap between her and her sister, and knowing that her sister's just a plain old Muggle with no connection to magic and her having a son that needs a place to stay, magic-free... Well, this is the perfect situation for it. That way, Lily gets to see Petunia again and Harry gets to replenish and relax in the house of family without magic there."

"That doesn't sound like the Lily we know," Remus mused, head tilted to the side as he pondered the grain of the table with his fingers. "Do you honestly think Lily would send her child to her sister just for the sake of convenience?"

"I think she would if it got rid of two problems," James reluctantly admitted, mouth twisting as if he tasted something awful. "I don't mean to make her sound like a horrible mother, guys, but she's killing two birds with one stone here; Harry gets his relaxation and his health back on track, and she gets her sister back."

"And she thinks Harry's the only way to get the path of communication up and running?" Remus questioned disbelievingly, eyebrows furrowing above intelligent green eyes. He shook his head at James's woeful silence. "If Lily had really wanted to have her sister back in her life, she would've done something about it years ago - before the twins were born, perhaps. I'm sorry, James, but Harry isn't a toy or an animal, you can't just loan him out to people to make conversation with."

"I know that, but Lily doesn't seem to," James said, letting out a long, exhausted sigh that seemed to take all the bones out of his body. "I've spent so many bloody sleepless nights thinking about this, I'm going grey at twenty-four," he groaned.

"Then stop thinking about it and just give me my Godson," Sirius said, as if it was as simple as that. And to him, it probably was. But he didn't have the future of the Wizarding world riding on his shoulders with his youngest son being the Champion.

"I can't. Not until Lily decides if Petunia's is the safest place for him yet," James told him sourly. "The Muggle world is safest at the moment with  _Him_ gone, and that's what's weighing on her mind the most. There's still loads of danger here with the Death Eaters still running around like headless chickens, cursing and killing random people for no reason now that there's no orders coming from their Master."

"Well, Petunia's a bloody Muggle, and Muggles don't understand we magical folk enough to help our children grow," Sirius growled angrily. "Especially  _her_ , and her stupid little knack of over-feeding things - I still have nightmares from that cat she used to have, which looked more like a Quaffle with four legs and a tail than any bloody cat. And by what you've described her son as, Harry'll be in danger of dying of a heart attack from too much food than any Death Eater we have!" he exclaimed.

"Sirius does have a point, James," Remus interjected softly, not looking either in the eye in case they thought he was taking a side. Because he wasn't. Not yet, at least. "He can have the comfort of familiarity at Sirius's without the fear of dying young from indecent care from a Muggle. And he really does love his Godfather, Prongs. Surely that must count for something?" he asked softly.

"All we've ever had was their best interests at heart," James told them quietly, looking so old and tired that both Remus and Sirius began to feel the remorse of pooling generously in their stomachs. "Lily's gone frantic with worrying about how Harry will live being a Muggle for most of his life, even if she'd make Petunia promise to tell him of his heritage when he's old enough to understand, as no one had told her. It just - it gives me headaches thinking about putting Harry's life in that wretched cow's hands, especially with that pile of Hippogriff shite she calls a husband by her side. I don't trust them as far as I can throw them to take care of him. It's just not in their nature to do it."

"Mark my words, James, Harry'll be damaged because of them if he ends up there," Sirius said darkly, scowling as he ran a hand through his mop of thick black hair roughly, pulling a few strands loose. "And I won't let that happen - I can't. If Lily does shove him off to them, I'll just steal him back after you leave. Or at least camp out in their backyard and put up Notice-Me-Not's to watch over him. That Vernon fellow gives me the willies whenever I think of him."

"That's because he almost raped you after you put that love potion in his drink at the wedding," James said dryly, and Remus smirked over at Sirius as he nursed his cup of tea. "I don't think he'll ever drink anything given to him by us ever again. Especially anything suspiciously smoking."

"Served him right for acting like a fool the entire ceremony. If he ever accepts any other drinks from me, it'll be spiked with Draught of the Living Death instead of anything harmless like any old love potion," Sirius muttered bitterly.

"Oh, don't tempt me, Pads," James groaned. "Lils and I are going to see them soon and I can't have murder on the brain, lest I actually go through with it and AK Dursley where he stands."

"Please do," Sirius said pleasantly, raising his cup of tea with a mocking smirk. "I haven't forgotten Moody's lesson on how to get rid of a body yet. Though I admit, it'd be harder to hide his whale of a body without suspicion."

Remus cleared his throat gently as he sipped his tea. "Just shrink his body down and flush him down the loo," he murmured delicately, as if he wasn't talking about the murder of another human being via _flushing them down the toilet_. "Or, if you want to be thorough, cut him into tiny pieces, let the blood drain out and  _then_ shrink him down. You can just banish the blood later. Simple."

Sirius hacked out a laugh in delighted surprise, startling little Alaric enough to have him stumbling into the little table set up for Harry's paints. Luckily James had had the foresight to glue the pots down into the table so nothing could go spilling anywhere - cleaning that kind of paint out of the carpet was a bitch. "I knew you were the brains of the Marauders for a reason, Moony old pal!" he cackled gleefully.

James grinned in agreement and laughed quietly, allowing the stress of their previous talk to slowly drain from his body. "We went to him for help with our essays for a reason, Pads," he teased humorously, chuckling.

Their laughter tapered off into silence when the front door abruptly opened and slammed shut, and the clicking of heels on the tiles could be heard coming in their direction. It was all that preceded the sight of lovely Lily Potter slipping into the room, frazzled from her day and windswept from her journey; her hair mass of fiery tangles around her shoulders and her freckled cheeks red.

Her shoulders seemed to sag with relief as she swung her purse onto the small table beside the door, ignoring the heavy thud it made on the wood, and emptied her robe pockets of everything - not including her wand, which she twirled between her fingers as she shucked off her robe and threw the darn thing on the rack. It gave an indignant shudder and fell to the floor, and Lily very obviously pretended not to notice it.

It was only when she noticed Sirius and Remus sitting with her husband at the table, that she realized she had been watched the entire time.

Lily stopped in her tracks, eyebrows crinkling in confusion as she eyed them - and the drinks sat before them, warily. James grinned as she cast a quick Tempus, glancing from the floating numbers and back to them in suspicion. It was just gone six in the evening, well into their unofficial Happy Hour, and she seemed to be expecting Sirius to get up and do another one of his drunken songs and dances - or to somehow attach himself to the chandelier and start swinging like a monkey.

Honestly, if it weren't for such a serious visit, James would have already expected to be drunk. They'd been there practically all day.

"Good afternoon, love," James greeted her, smiling softly as she pursed her lips and reluctantly seated herself beside her husband, immediately reaching over to tangle his hand with hers. She seemed to check his knuckles, as if to see if they were wet or not - seeing as whenever he drank alcohol, he always managed to get it all over the backs of his hands from drinking too greedily and spilling it everywhere. It amused him greatly to see her so perplexed. "Guess who decided to finally drop in and see their beloved Godsons?" he asked cheerfully, pressing an affectionate kiss to her knuckles.

"Why, I can't imagine who," she said dryly, distractedly reaching for James's cup of tea and stealing a sip. She made as if to grimace at once, before seeming to register that the brew didn't actually have the fiery alcoholic taste of Ogden's in it, and instead merely sipped again. That amused James as well. "I thought the boys didn't have Godfathers, seeing as no one's visited them for months. A shame, too, because I thought it was supposed to be an honor to be a Godparent. Especially seeing as they're the Potter twins, and one of them defeated He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Nothing too special, I guess."

"Oi! It's not my fault being an Auror keeps me so bloody busy all the time," Sirius muttered plaintively. "I'd be over here everyday if I could be, or I'd have them come over to mine for the day - or week."

Lily nodded slowly in acceptance, before rolling her emerald orbs to Remus and raising an eyebrow expectantly. "And you? What's your reason for abandoning your poor Godson in his time of need? He's getting to the age where he needs to be trained in everything, and if I'm not mistaken, you're the one always volunteering to give him the time of day, seeing as you 'have no social life', and all. So tell me, what have you been doing that's stopped you from seeing him?"

Remus flushed a dull red across his pale, scarred cheeks, and something in Lily immediately perked up, sensing something very  _interesting_ going on. Her eyes slowly narrowed, and Remus cringed slightly. "I've been visiting with Severus at Hogwarts," he murmured reluctantly, willfully ignoring the intense stares of both James and Sirius boring into the sides of his head. "We've been trying to create a new potion to help those infected with Lycanthropy, as the Wolfsbane potion only does so much to suppress the madness of the wolf and the symptoms, and it's rather hard to come by or afford."

"And have you come up with anything?" Lily asked, fascinated by the way the patchwork of red seemed to extend from Remus's cheeks to his ears in only a few seconds.

"I was able to transform within his presence without much pain, and I kept nearly all of my mind," said Remus, voice becoming slightly muffled and strangled as he dove for his tea and hid behind the cup, sipping it madly to avoid talking and staring down at the table as if fascinated by the grain in the wood.

After a moment of silence, Lily suddenly smirked and delicately raised James's cup of tea to sip at it, ignoring her husband's suspicious look. "And I suppose that small percentage of wolf didn't happen to be the dominating one, was it?" she asked airily, swirling the tea inside the cup. "I can certainly see why Severus is okay with doing this. He always was fascinated with you the most back in our Hogwarts days. I'm sure he's practically  _over the moon_  about this."

Remus's silence and heavily flushed face seemed to be answer enough, and it was a very telling answer.

Sirius choked on his spit, and James all but began to hyperventilate in shock as they worked out what Lily meant. Lily patiently handed her husband the tea while she called for Mipsy to bring a much stronger drink out, smirking with amusement as the hacking and wheezing noises brought the attention of her children skittering to a halt, and turning to look at them quizzically.

" _Mummy!_ " Alaric squealed, absently kicking at his castle in his effort to zip to Lily's side. He didn't even realize that it had fallen to pieces and ruin, not even when Harry's light footsteps accidentally kicked at some of the pieces. He was busy zooming around the table and vaulting himself into his mother's arms, snuggling up to her and breathing in her comforting floral scent and soothing the dull ache in his chest that was left from her disappearance.

"Mummy! You're back!" Harry cried happily, bolting after his brother around the table to Lily and Alaric's side, hardly minding that the paint table he'd been using had tipped over and crashed to the floor, sending a bright orange streaking after his feet. He glanced back apologetically as he felt Mipsy apparate into the room and begin cleaning it up, but by then he was distracted by the arm that hooked around his tiny body and pulled him in. His dormant magic hummed within him as it recognized his mother's, and he cuddled into her side instinctively, breathing in her scent and rubbing his cheek into her soft shirt. Oh, how he missed her.

"Oh, my little boys! How I've missed you both all day long," Lily cooed lovingly, cuddling a steadily growing Alaric to her torso and practically crushing her dainty Harry to her side. "What have you been doing since I've been gone, hmm? Have you been having fun?" she asked energetically, pressing kisses to their messy heads.

"I was building a castle for you, Mummy!" Alaric declared in a lilting voice - just barely grasping the words, and pulling away enough to point to the pile of blocks he'd been using. He still didn't notice that it wasn't looking very castle-like, nor did he care for his father and uncles - who were all still affected and wheezing and coughing. "And Hawwy was painting a pictwure!"

Lily grinned beautifully as she looked between her sons, absently noting how her little Harry had a few streaks of paint smeared on his shirt and cheek. "Really? Well, I can't wait to see what they both look like!" she enthused, pressing two more kisses to their soft heads and not minding when Alaric made a motion to shoo her away. Her little Harry didn't mind at all, and she pressed yet another kiss to his head as if to rub it in. She grinned when he accepted it and cuddled even further into her. "Why don't you both go and finish up, and I'll have Mipsy get dinner on, yeah?" she suggested.

"Noodles!" Alaric practically demanded, giving her such a stern look that was entirely all James. Harry giggled in agreement from her side, and the two seemed to grin at each other in triumph.

Lily huffed out a laugh and reluctantly nodded, conceding to yet  _another_ night of having pasta for dinner. It was really wearing on her nerves having so much pasta for every weeknight dinner, but if it was what her babies wanted, then they'd get it. They'd be over it by Sunday, anyway. "Alright, we'll have noodles for supper again," she said, smiling. "Now go play, you'll have to go wash up soon and then it'll be dinner time, and then off to bed. An early night is called for, I think."

Alaric groaned and gave a ridiculous pout. "But I not tired!" he said emphatically. "Hawwy not tired too!"

"Not now, maybe," Lily said in amusement, digging her fingers into his side hard enough to make him giggle boisterously and curl into her side to escape it. She sneaked a kiss to his temple then. "But after dinner you'll both be ready to drop off at any moment. Your Godfather's must have played with you all day and as soon as you've eaten, you'll both be out like a light."

"Okay, Mummy. I go play now," little Harry said in his gentle voice, curling into her side just a little bit more, before pulling away and skipping back around the table and back to his paints. The mess of orange paint was gone from the floor, fortunately, but that also meant he didn't have anymore orange to paint with. Luckily he didn't necessarily need it, lest he bother Mipsy to get him some.

It appeared anyway, with a lovely little side pot of warm pink that put a grin on his face.

After a beat of silence, Alaric zoomed back into view by his side, and they shared another grin as they both went back to playing. Alaric didn't make a fuss about his castle being demolished like he usually would have in their parent's company, which Harry noticed by way of his brother's quiet muttering and huffing. In fact, Alaric went right back to building it up again like he hadn't before. He kept sneaking little looks at Harry's painting, eyes wide each time as they took in the bright green orb on the end of a long black stick angling downward, and a pair of unnaturally red, narrowed eyes glaring out from behind it.

It wasn't like it was the first time he'd painted something like it, anyway.


	5. The Sister of the Witch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, thanks for bearing with me on the building of the foundation in this fic! I know, it's taking a long time and it's all centered around the Potters and not just Harry individually, but trust me, I'm getting onto the good stuff as we speak! 
> 
> As you guys probably already know, I don't have an established post date for when the new chapters will come out - it's more of a mix and match thing right now, and believe me, I know it's frustrating. But then again, December was an incredibly busy time, so much shopping and running on low funds and all that rot. I'm going to try and fit a chapter in every week, so I'm not neglecting anyone or my work!
> 
> Anyway, please enjoy! Thanks for sticking with me so far! 
> 
> Lots of love from me, Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year!

**The Sister of the Witch**

_ **Thursday, 10th of May, 1984.**_  
**Living Room, 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey.**

Privet Drive was, in James's humble opinion, one of the worst places he'd ever had to visit. And that was coming from a man who'd visited some of the poorest villages after Voldemort had had his fun. Back-stabbing and gossip were fundamental if one wanted to live in a place like this, and it wasn't hard to spot the few neighbors that had been brave enough to spy on them the moment they arrived in Sirius's shiny little car - a Thunderbird, if what Lily had said was true. 

The shining red color had drawn the attention of a few men, but whether they'd been appreciative or sneering, James couldn't tell. All the other cars on the block were common white, grey or black colors with not a spot of vibrant color anywhere. 

He'd hated the very name of _Privet Drive_ the moment he stepped foot in it. And this is where their Harry would be living. It made him sick to his stomach to even think about having his son here.

"I really do wish that it was all different, Petunia," said Lily plaintively, straight white teeth nibbling unsurely at her lower lip at the unimpressed picture her sister made; stiff-backed and rigid before her. Harry was sat in her lap quietly, attention held captive by the modest sized black grim between his fingers gifted by his Godfather only just days ago. The other little boy, Dudley, was playing by his mother's feet with loud and colorful toys that trilled and shrieked at every touch. But there was nothing he would share with her Harry, and thus, her little boy stayed with her.

"But, you see, things had degraded in the war so much that we had to go into hiding when I was pregnant with the twins," she said, and the trauma of that very night echoed plainly into her voice.  "I couldn't send anything in the post and I couldn't receive anything, either. If I could have spoken to you earlier, I surely would have -"

"And now you want to dump your child on me?" Petunia questioned with a steely voice, thin eyebrows lowered over her flat blue eyes impassively. James thought it made her look like a stick insect. "You think that just because you bat those pretty little lashes at me and apologize, that I'll fold for you just like you want me to? Like Mother did whenever she caught you sneaking out to see that boy? No, I think not this time, Lily. I won't bend and scrape to your wishes just because you find it convenient for me to."

Lily sighed and swallowed tightly, very nearly allowing the curse that James kept muttering beside her to come out of her _own_ mouth. She elbowed him sharply and locked gazes with her sister. "I'm not doing this to make your life worse, Petunia," she stated carefully. "My son isn't as healthy as we'd like -"

"I am not taking in a sickly child – nephew or no!" Petunia spat, so abruptly that her son wobbled in shock and whirled to stare at her. He lost interest very quickly when she smiled down at him reassuringly, and returned to his violent playing. The softness in her eyes was quick to fade when she looked at the family sitting opposite - at her sister that wanted to leave her problem child with her. "I refuse to pay more attention to your son than my own, and that is exactly what would happen if -"

"No, you misunderstand me!" Lily rushed to say, before Petunia could say something incredibly rude and offensive in front of James – Merlin knew how well he'd take it. "His magical core is damaged. If we keep him with us any longer, he might become a Squib. He's very healthy in every other aspect, I can assure you that. It wouldn't be any trouble to take care of him at all, he's a very good boy."

"Vernon won't tolerate any magic in our household," Petunia stated bluntly, looking down her upturned nose at little Harry. He was cooing at the dog between his fingers, such a soft expression on his face it almost made the woman physically sick. What boy had the right to be so... _girlish?_ "If he so much as _sneezed_ a speck of glitter, he'd be out on his ear faster than he could say 'sorry'. I can promise you that. I won't have our good name sullied by _him,_ and neither will Vernon. We've worked hard to keep our name separate from yours, and it shall not be ruined by that boy."

"My son is important in _both_ of our worlds, Petunia," said James tersely then, flexing the protective arm he had wrapped around Lily's shoulders, and by extension, Harry, at the dirty look on his sister in-law's face. "He saved us all that night in Godric's Hollow, and that includes you and your wretched husband. So let's not mince words here. The only reason you don't want him under your roof is because he has magic – magic powerful enough to defeat the strongest Dark Lord in recent history before he could walk – before he was even out of his cot.

"You don't want him here because he'd outshine your butterball of a son the moment he sits next to him. You're jealous of Lily, of all that she's accomplished without you at her side to leech some of the attention, and you're so angry at yourself because you've treated Lily so horribly in the past that you've created a permanent rift between you," he ranted passionately. "How does it feel to look at your younger sister and see that she's gone further in life than you could ever hope to be?"

Petunia stared at him blankly, dull blue eyes wide and thoughtless. The silence was deafening, even with Dudley banging noisily at his toys and the clock ticking away madly on the mantelpiece, which was chocked full with photos of said boy. She swallowed roughly, the sound unnaturally loud, and cleared her throat. "Perhaps I have been... _somewhat_ rough when talking to you, Lily," she conceded haltingly, stiffly. "But that's only because I am – envious of your ability to find the good in all things otherwise bad. I don't want your son in my family, either one of them, and I know Vernon agrees with me. You should not have come here."

"I wouldn't trust anyone else but you to raise my Harry," Lily whispered soulfully, those famous emerald eyes pools of sorrow and pleas. "We're sisters – he's your nephew. Can't you find it in your heart to move past whatever mistakes I've made and to accept him, innocent as he is of all my faults?"

Petunia eyed her closely, watching as the redheaded woman all but clutched at her youngest son in something akin to desperation. A flicker of sympathy and pity sparked in her eyes, but it was all too quickly swallowed by the pits of bitterness that hid within. "There's another reason why you're asking this of me now rather than before," she mused pensively. "But you can't tell me what that is, can you?"

The statement was astute and far too observant for the usually inept Petunia to have made just by herself - shallow as she was and never pondering beneath the surface, for that was a faux pas never made in polite company. The surprise must have shown on their faces, for the blonde woman's lips twitched into the ghost of a smug grin. Even Petunia had her moments where intelligence would shine through, instead of the selfish need to prove that she was far superior than whomever she was talking to. Those moments indeed were far between and rare, but powerful enough to give pause to planning, intelligent Lily and strategist James. 

But then again, James didn't really think her epiphany should have shocked them all that much. Wherever Lily was involved, Petunia was thinking of every plausible hole and sometimes even digging a pit around her words; trapping the redhead before she could make a move edgewise. Any vulnerable point of an idea, was taken advantage of and exploited to its fullest extent.

And this situation wasn't any different.

James blew out a loud, long breath of sheer frustration, even as a wearisome scowl pulled at his handsome face. Lily stayed quiet. "There's lots of things we can't tell you, Petunia," he muttered darkly. "But it's important to Lils that you take in our babe, even if it's the last thing I want to happen."

Petunia arched a pencil thin brow at him.

James merely scoffed at the look, no more intimidated by it than he would be of Remus's furry figure. "Don't give me that, Dursley. You hate me just as much as I hate you. That's never been a secret," he sneered contemptuously. "Giving up one of my son's, especially to your whale of a bloody husband, is one of the worst possible things I can think of to happen to my children. The least you could do is have an ounce of consideration for the pain your sister is going through - giving up one of her firstborn's, especially in parting with her youngest, hurts more than you can ever imagine."

Petunia's face shriveled up in annoyance and irritation, a look so severe that it was almost like she didn't have a face at all. "Don't act as if becoming a Squib is the worst thing in the world, Potter. The boy would hardly remember if he had any magic at all," she shot back in return, shifting primly in her seat and brushing a thin hand over her son's thin blonde locks. "Vernon will only accept the boy if he has no magic. _We_ will not accept him if he has any magic. I refuse to have yet another freak in this family, and I will not put my son through the same situations I had to endure when living with Lily. It's not right."

"Dumbledore offered -"

Petunia leaned forward in her seat, a nasty scowl shaping her rather unfortunate face further. Lily matched her in kind by leaning back into James's embrace. "Dumbledore knows _nothing_ about children," she whispered poisonously. "He wouldn't know what they needed if it bit him on his abnormally large nose."

"He offered to bind Harry's magic until his eleventh birthday," Lily murmured, and the atmosphere of the room froze with tension and shock. Petunia looked astounded and James – she couldn't bear to look at him. His arm was like a steel band around her, unforgiving and hard. "And if Harry's magic isn't up to par by then, he wants to keep him here until such a time as he is."

"And that's what you've chosen for our son? A life of mundane things and no magic? His history, his birthright, his _heritage_ wiped away for the sake of something as rubbish as power?" James asked through gritted teeth.

Lily swallowed painfully around the razor-like guilt and remorse lodged in her throat, but she nodded her head nonetheless. "It's what's best for him," she whispered brokenly, staring with glassy emeralds down at the messy raven head of her youngest leaning trustingly against her chest – so naïve to his near future. "He'll always know that he has magic, but he won't be able to use it – he can't. The whole point of having him live here is to get him better, not to make him worse."

"And you don't think he'll be hurt when Dumbledore removes his bindings?" James asked harshly. "The kind of magic he has can backlash _so easily_ – he could be killed if he's not eased into it gradually. Which he won't be, since you want him trussed up and bound like a common _dog_ for the next however many bloody years."

"And yet it's already decided," Lily said, sweeping her fingers through the silken messy locks of her youngest. "Dumbledore has already worked out the spell we'll use for him. It's for the best, James."

James said nothing, but the slacking of his arm around her said more than anything he could possibly ever think of.

"Bind him and bring him and all of his possessions by Saturday. I expect you to set up a trust for all expenses covered for him by then, enough to last until his eleventh birthday," Petunia suddenly demanded, rising from her seat with a steadiness that belied her nerves. She stared down at her sister with glacial eyes, but there was an odd sort of smile flickering at the corners of her thin mouth. "Vernon and I will have a place for him here. But not with magic. There will be none of that nonsense here."

"Thank you, Petunia," said Lily sorrowfully, as they rose simultaneously and gifted the horse-like woman with rare halting smiles, although you wouldn't call what James gave the woman a smile. "You'll not regret this. I swear it, 'Tuney."

Petunia smiled, a slow growing thing that was certainly unnerving to behold. "I know."


	6. The Sound of Silence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: There is blood and gore and a LOT of violence, so please be wary of reading if you're grossed out or are squicked by a child being attacked by Vampires and... 'Dogs'. I hate the very thought of it, but it's necessary to progress the plot-line further.
> 
> If you think something's missing or something needs to be added, please tell me and I'll do my best to amend it! 
> 
> Cheers lovelies!

** The Sound of Silence **

**_ Wednesday, 17th of August, 1988. _ **  
**The Cupboard Under the Stairs, 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey.**  

Harry laid awake with tired eyes staring up sightlessly at the dusty, slanted ceiling, unable to sleep as something scratched insistently at the inside of his cupboard door. He suspected it was a mouse - and couldn't help but compare himself to the common-day pest. It was locked in there just as he was, forced to hide in the shadows because of some reason or another; someone's queasiness or hatred. He was nothing more than a pest to the Dursleys as well, and it showed with every one of their actions.

Locked in a matchbox of a closet until the morning, when they needed him to do some more chores for them.

"Stop doing that," he whispered to the tiny creature, keeping still even as the urge to toss around in his cot and throw the limp pillow over his head pressed on eagerly. "You're going to get me in trouble if they hear you," he insisted quietly.

The mouse stopped scratching at the wood, but he could hear it squeaking to itself instead, though thankfully it really was as quiet as they say Church mice are. Harry allowed a small smile to spread on his face, relieved - until it started scratching at the door again, perhaps even more insistently and twice as loudly in the silent hall outside.

"Quit it!" he hissed, glaring at the thing through the thick darkness of his cupboard. "I'm stuck in here just as much as you are, so there's no point in trying to get out until they unlatch the door!"

His words, as expected, did nothing to deter the tiny creature from attempting a getaway from his little room. That was, until the mouse suddenly squeaked in fright and scampered under his cot. He could hear its tiny paws working hard to navigate its way through the cleaning supplies stuffed under him, to a place just that tiny bit denser and more invisible than the rest of his cupboard.

Harry frowned in consternation, grumbling silently in his head as a pang of remorse went through him. "I'm not that scary," he mumbled. 

And then he heard it; what had caused the mouse to flee in panic.

A pair of small elephant feet were thumping down the stairs overhead, overly careful of the placement of said feet on the creaking wooden stairs, and coming to a haltingly silent stop in front of his door. It could only be one person, seeing as the other two people in the house were either too loud or too light to be heard. 

And what would they have been doing coming down to him in the middle of the night, anyway? No, it had to have been only one person.

"Oi," said a quiet voice, and there was the familiar sound of his air grates sliding open. It was too dark inside his cupboard to see in, but it was a lighter darkness outside that he could easily see his cousin's boring blue eyes peering in at him. "Oi, Harry! You awake?" 

Harry dithered on whether he should answer or not. The relationship between them hadn't been as great as Harry had initially wanted; the blonde was always bullying him and teasing him at every available chance, and it was a chore to have to be within ten feet of the noisy, walking-talking food disposal bin of a boy. The blonde had no filter or sense of politeness whenever he was around - and respect for his personal boundaries? Forget that. Harry still had a couple bruises from yesterday morning.

"What is it, Dudley?" he asked wearily.

There was a snorted giggle. "I heard Mummy and Daddy talking about you today," he heard the blonde say, and Harry couldn't help but think him smug.

"And?" he prompted warily.

" _And_ they were talking about your stupid parents," said Dudley meanly through the grate, those piggish eyes crinkling in a horrid smirk not unlike his father. "Said they didn't want you and that's why you're still here. They were s'posed to pick you up a few weeks ago - but they didn't come! Not even a letter came for you. They think you're a freak just as much as Mummy and Daddy do, and that's why they left you here in the first place!"

His heart hurt, but he shouldn't have expected anything else when talking to _Dudley Dursley_. Nothing but filth and poison could come out of that grease trap he called a mouth - he was just like his father.

"So? I don't care," Harry said baldly, despite very much caring, and it showed in the very significant quaver of his voice. "Just go back to sleep, Dudley. It's past your bedtime. You don't want Aunt Petunia to come down and see you out of your room, do you?" he sneered.

He heard Dudley snort again. "Why don't  _you_  go back to bed, Freak," the blonde sneered back.

"I'm already in bed," Harry retorted tartly. "And you don't even know what that word means."

"I do, too!"

"Then what does it mean?"

"You."

Harry rolled his eyes and tossed onto his side, his back pointedly facing to the door. Not that Dudley could see him, it was far too dark in his cupboard for anything to be seen but what the significantly lighter darkness outside allowed through the grate in his door. "Go back to your room," he muttered.

Dudley scoffed and thundered his way back up the stairs, hardly caring to keep his noise to a minimum on the way back to his room like he'd done on the way out. He didn't bother keeping his door from slamming, either, which would no doubt put his working father in a horrid mood in the morning, as he had to get up in just a few hours to go to work. Not to mention that his mother was a very cranky person when running on little sleep, as well.

That effected Harry, for they were both on Holidays from school and had a long ways to go before having to return just yet, and Aunt Petunia was making quick use of that time to work him to the bone with chores. She was a lot worse when she didn't have a full nine hours sleep than usual; snappier, moodier than ever and dead-set on grinding him into the ground with dangerously arduous tasks. Unlike him, who apparently didn't even run on sleep or food, but on  _water_  only.

A cramped space in which he was stuffed in for hours on end, a grain of food that sustained not even a mouse, and a small jug of water every two days presented a very small, malnourished boy by the name of Harry James Potter. Not to mention the 'taps' and clips to the back of the head if he did anything  _wrong_ , and the near sleepless nights from sheer exhaustion. He was near enough a skeleton as it was. And they only encouraged others to continue their horrible ways by treating him like a mentally ill boy with no future prospects other than to perform menial manual labor.

He'd had to mow the lawns of the neighbors who cared enough to want to kiss up to his aunt and uncle, and he wasn't rewarded with anything - not so much as a drink or a bob for his small coin collection.

But he was still quiet and introverted, soft like he was when he'd been even littler. Just a lot smarter, bigger and quicker than when he'd lived with his parents. No matter the attempts his aunt and uncle made to squash that petite side of his nature out of him, he remained the same. The kind, gentle soul practically born from stubbornness endured within, even as his shell suffered the strain of lacking nourishment and vitamins. It made him feel somewhat proud that he'd been able to stand under the horrible weight the Dursley's pushed onto him. 

Through all of the odd chores and punishments, he stayed straight and steady on the lines of his moral compass. Never talking back to his aunt, for she was a lady, and only talking back to his uncle when he found it  _absolutely necessary._ Not that that happened often, he didn't dare talk to his uncle in any way disrespectfully. Not after the tanning his hide took when he tried it near a year ago.

_"And they were talking about your stupid parents. Said they didn't want you and that's why you're still here. They were s'posed to pick you up a few weeks ago - but they didn't come! Not even a letter came for you. They think you're a freak just as much as Mummy and Daddy do, and that's why they left you here in the first place!"_

Of course Lady Luck would pair him with parents that didn't even want him - she'd already given him to his aunt and uncle, who were bad enough to live with without adding hateful parents.

Maybe this was the universe telling him that he was a bad person? Or Fate setting up a series of unfortunate circumstances in which the bad in him would eventually be beaten out of him? He didn't know, his head hurt from lack of sleep but his eyes felt too gritty to close for long. Confusion wasn't an unfamiliar bed fellow, but neither was sadness, and they perhaps made the worst duo to comfort him. But it was better than the all consuming numbness that spread through him whenever Uncle Vernon decided to be very cruel about the lack of his parentage.

Sometimes it was better to retreat inside one's head than to face up to the insane notion of reality.

Before his eyes, he watched a weak ray of sunlight spread on his wall, slipping through the seams on his door and spearing through the fortuitously open slat that allowed him a small breath of fresh air. He was almost thankful that Dudley had decided to give sneaking around to bully him at night a go. His cupboard stank of sleep and mouse droppings.

The pipes inside the walls groaned and grumbled as Uncle Vernon woke for the morning, beginning his ritual of pampering himself before work by showering, and Harry sighed to himself as a new day began once again.

Aunt Petunia's light shuffle was already heading downstairs, the sound light above him compared to Dudley's hammering steps a lot earlier in the morning. He heard her muttering outside his door, and then the lock snapping open on the wood. It was short, sharp and quick; she hadn't gotten enough sleep last night.

"Get up and make breakfast. And do your best not to burn anything," she told him stiffly, knowing that he heard every word despite the door remaining closed. The slats were open instead of closed, which they'd most definitely been last night, and she'd taken notice. "If you blacken even one piece of bacon, I'll inform Vernon of your little adventure around the house last night. Are we understood, Boy?"

No other words were needed to cow him into obeying.

"Yes, Aunt Petunia," Harry answered dutifully.

He waited patiently until she'd shuffled off into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea, before stretching and getting himself ready for the day. He dragged on his stained work clothes from yesterday and slowly emerged from his cupboard, wincing as the light stabbed mercilessly at his dry, aching eyes.

It was going to be a bad day.

Quickly, so as not to alert his obsessive aunt that something was amiss, he dropped to his knees and searched under his bed. He spotted it in the far left hand corner under his cot, crouched behind a clutch of fallen mismatched army soldiers stashed in the place he knew Dudley wouldn't look for and staring at him with wide, spooked eyes.

"Come quick, or Aunt Petunia will spot you and get the frying pan!" he urged it, pushing his door open just a little further and shuffling back to provide a little more space for the timid thing. "Run!"

The mouse stared at him for another moment, as if contemplating the truthfulness of his words - before it broke out into a mad dash under his arm and out into the living room, tiny paws almost a blur against the floor as it sped beyond his sight around the corner where the television sat. He imagined a cozy hole in the wall stuffed to the brim with crumbs and pebbles of food left over from Dudley and Uncle Vernon.

It was sad that a mouse was fed more in one day than he was in two weeks.

Harry shut his door quietly and gave his pants a light pat down, before deeming them presentable enough for his aunt's silent inspection and meandering his way into the kitchen. He found Aunt Petunia sat at the table with her head in one hand, her eyes shut as she dozed over the steaming cup if tea. Her hair was still in curlers and she looked - in one word, wrecked.

But even sleeping, a Black Mamba still had its poison.

Harry wasted no time in getting out the full English breakfast ingredients, knowing full well what Uncle Vernon would do if he didn't see bacon, eggs, toast and sausages on the table by the time he finished getting dressed. Aunt Petunia seemed to be too tired to demand her usual fruit salad today, which meant less mess for Harry to clean up and less of a rush to get everyone's breakfast served. It seemed that she might finally be over that new health craze that Mrs Croger from number 11 had bragged about.

Harry was more than glad to stop cutting up watermelons, strawberries, and all those other sticky fruits. It was all too satisfying being able to make a proper fry up.

"You're to mow the lawns today, preferably before your uncle gets home. They're beginning to look a travesty in comparison to the other houses."

Harry nodded even as he cracked a few eggs into a pan and tossed a few rashers of bacon in another. He was skilled enough to avoid the grease splatters from the pans now, since he'd surely had enough practice to know where to keep his wandering hands. "Yes, Aunt Petunia."

"And weed and trim the gardens - they're looking a little more outgrown than Mrs Pattisons, and I can't have her parading around like she's just won the award for Britain's Best Homes. We can do much better than she can. Overgrown, pompous trollop she is."

"Yes, Aunt Petunia."

Aunt Petunia sipped indelicately at her tea, obviously uncaring for how 'uncouth' she was behaving without her husband present. "And do remember to do the washing and to clean the bathroom, they're both getting out of hand and I can't have my Duddy tripping and breaking his neck on your dirty clothes."

Harry agreed immediately, if a bit absently, and cooked up the rest of the veritable feast in a haze of muscle memory. He set aside a plate for Dudley for when he decided to crawl out of his room later, and went about making toast and setting the spreads out on the table while the paper towels soaked up the remaining fat and grease on the bacon and sausages.

He'd just set Uncle Vernon's plate on the table when the man himself made his first appearance of the day.

"Morning, dearest," he greeted Aunt Petunia pleasantly, earning himself a bright smile from the clearly dozing blonde. Uncle Vernon speared Harry with a glare next and shoved himself into his seat, confident that it wouldn't break despite the frightful creaking sound it made otherwise. "Where's my coffee, Boy?" he grunted, irritated.

Harry merely nodded and went about making his coffee, taking care not to add too much milk like last time. Though it wasn't like Uncle Vernon could taste the difference - he'd think used toilet paper was delicious if he knew it came from the arse of a British Royal.

He didn't get a thank you from his Uncle or Aunt as they tucked into the heavenly meal, nor did they attempt to smack him with anything when he snatched three pieces of buttered toast and a glass of water and disappeared outside. He counted that as an upside to this horrible day; being able to eat the food he'd made.

Although, with how tired his aunt seemed, he might be able to get all of his chores done at his own pace while she took a nap in her bed. Which is what would happen as soon as she'd made her daily appearance of wishing her husband a positive day at work with a kiss by the car. She wouldn't have to make another appearance outside of that little routine that all of the housewives on Privet Drive seemed to all mimic like their lives depended on it.

And that was when Harry's time to relax would come in - not that he'd be lazing around, of course. Because even though gossiping and backstabbing occurred between every housewife, they still took the time out of their day to tell his aunt if they'd seen him breaking habit - which is another word for punishment, as they seem to think he wouldn't work out.

He paid them back in kind by not offering to mow their lawns or to weed their gardens, which is what he did for the precious few good people in Privet Drive.

Finished with his plain breakfast, Harry set his half-empty glass down in the shade where it wouldn't be harmed and quickly got to work bringing out the lawn mower. It was a spindly old thing with one giant roller of razor sharp blades, and it was a bitch to cut the grass with. But no matter how long it took and how hard it was to use, it still leveled the grass like any other motorized lawn mower. It just took a little more perseverance than anything else to get it all done.

He growled, grunted, cursed under his breath and sweated heavily under the hot summer sun as he pushed harder at the damn thing, until he was almost falling face first into the ground with how hard he was pushing himself. It was satisfying when he looked at the state of the lawns after, clean, pristine edged and almost professional like with how much practice he'd had at it, but it was a pain to get them in that condition when all he had were severely outdated equipment to do it.

"Oi, Potter!"

 _Oh, not now!_ He groaned inwardly, scowling when he spotted the trio of troublemakers standing just inside the door of the house, slivers of bacon left over from that morning in their hands and smirks on their faces. Dudley was easily the largest of the three, with his round belly and double chins, and he looked like he was flanked by a pair of sticks; a rat-like Piers Polkiss that sniveled and groveled at Dudley's feet like he hung the moon, and a completely clueless Dennis McInny that truly had no idea what he was doing.

The three main bullies in his life. A day wasn't complete for them without jeering at him in some manner or another. 

"Guess what Daddy said you had to make for supper tonight? That you won't be getting a piece of, obviously," Dudley taunted, snorting a nasty laugh that was echoed by his cronies.

Harry ignored him even as he passed him by, forcing the blades over a stubborn clump of grass. He vaguely heard Dudley and his friends cuss at him, but he mustered on grimly. Aunt Petunia must have already gone on up to bed, because if she'd heard them say those words they would've been out on their ears before they could get a word in edgewise.

Except for her perfect Dudley, of course. He'd be rewarded with ice cream and television, just like always, and Harry would be punished with influencing Dudley with his freakish tricks.

"Don't ignore me, Freak!" Dudley suddenly snapped. "I'm talking to you!"

"Go bother someone else, Dudley! I'm busy!" Harry snapped back, and slammed the mower over another knot of grass with a screeching hack that grated at his ears - like always. This was one of the more dangerous tasks that Uncle Vernon had him doing as a rule, regardless of any past accidents involving the incredibly sharp blades and clumsy limbs. The smallest accident he'd had with it was when he'd almost scalped the top of his foot pushing and pulling at it too hard, a Hospital experience, to be sure.

He didn't want to remember the worst of his accidents with it, but all he had to say to anyone who asked, was that those happened few and far between - practically non-existent now that he'd mastered the art of mowing the lawns with such a rustic tool.

" _Busy_ , are you?" he heard Dudley growl, but he was too angry to continue being baited by the brute.

He was resolved to being bullied by his cousin, that lot in his life was unavoidable, just like it was his lot in life to cook, clean and cater to the whims of his aunt and uncle. But he didn't have to rise up to the taunts and jeering that the blonde was throwing at him, he could just - he jerked in place as a fist sized rock collided with his tender back and somehow seemed to _smash_ to pieces with an ear piercing shattering sound, catching horribly at his ragged shirt on the way and scratching at the back of his vulnerable legs. The cold wet feeling that immediately followed told him that it had been his glass that had been thrown and smashed to bits on his back, and was in fact, not a rock.

He was frozen in absolute shock.

"Yeah? Well how do you like _that_ for being busy, Freak?! That's what you get for ignoring me!"

Harry cringed against the handle in his grasp, swallowing down the despairing scream that wanted desperately to escape him. He'd have to pick up those shards of glass before he went back inside, or he'd get glass in his feet if he took a step in the wrong direction. Not to mention what Uncle Vernon would do if he found out his glass had been smashed on the lawn. That leather belt on his back was the least of his problems if Aunt Marge decided to pay a visit with Ripper, her chunky, mean old Bulldog that just so happened to  _like rolling around in the grass._

_Dudley, you stupid pig!_

"What did I say about ignoring me?!" Dudley suddenly yelled. "Fucking Hell! You haven't learned a thing even after living here for years! Dad was right - you need to learn your place the  _proper_ way!"

Harry's eyes widened as his gut churned with the instinct to run. He knew exactly what was about to happen. Dudley and his ilk had done this too many times for him not to know what was about to occur. 

"Let's get him!" Piers shouted.

Harry dropped the mower like it was the hottest thing in the world and bolted out of the backyard faster than ever before, skidding down the drive and around the front garden as Dudley and his gang thundered after him. His bare feet stung with every second they touched the boiling hot pavement, but he knew that if he stopped for a breather or to blow off the stinging sensation in his feet now Piers or Dennis would catch up to him quicker than Dudley, and they wouldn't be any nicer in tackling him to the ground.

They were worse than Dudley in the way that they were faster than the blonde; managing to hit him an astonishing three times in every one of Dudley's full weight blows. With bruises already littering his skin now, he couldn't handle any others joining them.

"Come back - here, Potter!" he heard Dudley yell, and heaved his legs faster until he was having to angle his body a certain way to make it around the bends in one piece without falling flat on his face.

The blonde was too big and lazy to be running for long and especially at the pace they were going. Harry knew from experience that he'd stop chasing him before for too long because he'd be too tired to want to hit him. 

But Piers and Dennis usually stopped with him, instead of carrying on for him.

"Go - go get him!"

Dudley's heavily labored breathing tapered off into silence and only the sounds of Dennis and Piers was heard behind him, over his exhausted panting and the sound of shoes and bare feet hitting the ground. They were yelling and shouting for him to stop, to come back, but he knew too well by instinct that if he went back now, Dudley would be recuperated enough to hit him. Winded or no.

They were running in a direction they hadn't taken before when playing Harry Hunting - that Harry had never seen before, anyway. It looked a lot like what he pictured the slums to look when Aunt Petunia mentioned them in some way or another; dark, broken down, poor.  He hadn't really left Privet Drive other than to go to school, unlike Dudley who got to go everywhere for some reason or another, and his direction skills weren't exactly top notch. There was the possibility that he'd get lost down here a lot easier than he felt comfortable with. There were more and more winding alleyways the further they ran, less well-kept houses and way more unkempt people that loitered around corners than what there should be.

It was dangerous here, and everybody knew it from the way they looked around suspiciously every second or so.

"Oi, Potter!" Dennis hollered, but any sting he might have had in his voice was removed by the ridiculous amount of panting he was doing. Harry fancied that he sounded just that tiniest bit afraid. "You can't- go in there! Freaks aren't allowed near normal people!"

Harry ignored them both, just as he pressed himself to ignore the looks they were getting from the unkempt people along the street. He had to duck, weave and avoid the few stragglers that ignored him just as much as he ignored them and stepped in his way purposefully, and he could hear how difficult it was for Dennis and Piers to wind their way through thin crowd by the way the line of angry exclamations that came from said strangers.

"Oi! Watch where you're going!" One of the drunkenly stumbling men snapped, and Harry realized that he'd only just managed to keep his shoulder from knocking the man's bottle from his grip. As weak as it already had been.

He shuddered and stuttered out an apology, but kept running, even when Piers and Dennis seemed to jump into the same man and unsuccessfully navigate their way past him. Harry could imagine the verbal flogging they were getting for threatening to break the man's booze bottle. It pulled a grin to his flushed, sweaty face - before realization followed up just as quickly. It was all too late for him as he realized that he didn't have anyone chasing him anymore, and that he was running blindly into a particularly hostile environment that the Dursleys most definitely wouldn't think of to search for him in.

His running ground to a halt in the middle of the cracked path, chest heaving with the evidence of how fast and far he'd ran from the Dursleys backyard in Privet Drive.

He was well and truly lost.

**-oOoOoOo-**

By the time dusk rolled around and the unnerving dark was beginning to set in, Harry had unintentionally wandered even further from Privet Drive. He was getting tangled up in the winding paths, spooked by how identically horrible each house was after the last. However, instead of looking for the path leading back to the Dursleys and punishment, he'd resigned himself to looking for shelter on the winding paths for the night instead. There hadn't been a spot unsoiled or vacant so far; there were too many people looking for places to squat down in for the night, all hostile and angry if they thought he strayed a bit too close to their turf.

Harry had no inclination to want to perch in a box next to some old man who'd try and steal his clothes from him when he finally nodded off. With how starved they seemed to be, the clothes on his back probably looked like a comfortable tent to them; cozy instead of the old, tattered things they had.

He was almost glad to realize that his clothes looked just as close to falling apart as theirs, as that meant they wouldn't try to steal something that'd be inevitably worthless in the near future.

It was really getting dark by now, and despite the summer being hot and unrelenting during the day, by night it was practically freezing. Especially when being barefoot and on the concrete as he was. He was just dragging his feet down the last alleyway in one last ditch effort before he plonked out cold on the walkway, when he spotted a vacant enough looking spot by a dilapidated door - and a rather neat little box stationed beside it. His throat closed up as hope welled up like a balloon in his chest; the box wasn't entirely too small to fit an adult, but it was big enough for him to sleep inside comfortably. However, there was still the chance that someone had already claimed it.

But even as he approached, ducking down to peak in under the flaps, nothing jumped out or hissed a brutal curse word at him. It was empty, and looked relatively new and unspoiled by any animals or people. It was almost suspicious how something so perfect remained untouched in an alleyway homeless people were sure to walk down, in search of the very thing he'd just found.

He crawled inside and half closed the flaps behind him, anyway, for he was much too tired and sore to give a damn about any bedbugs or whatever may have originally been in the box. It wasn't all that different from sleeping inside his cupboard, if he didn't think about the disgusting, dirty, grimy walls waiting just outside the cardboard walls. Just another chore for him to get through. And just like his cupboard, it was actually pretty nice and cozy inside, and it provided a decent windbreak from the chilly alley outside.

"I'll find my way back soon," he whispered soothingly, curling up on his side with his legs tucked up against his belly. The darkness outside got steadily darker, and the inside of his eyes became so much more attractive than they were that morning. "I can't be too far..."

**-oOoOoOo-**

Something was moving the walls.

_I'm okay. Nothing can get me in here. I'm okay._

Harry's eyes jumped open when something prowled by the small opening of the box, pushing its musty, dirty, furry smell to his nose. It was making an odd whuffling noise at the sides of his shelter, inhaling deeply by what he could guess and testing to see if someone or something was inside, and his heart jumped to his throat when the cardboard was nudged again. It had to have been a dog, because no human would possibly act like this.

He only hoped the dog was friendly enough to go away, or to not wet on his box; soggy, wet cardboard didn't do a thing to keep put the cold, or keep its shape. Not to mention it would stink to the high heavens with the nasty pong all pet owners were familiar with.

He opened his mouth to scare it away, but at the last second his throat closed up and his eyes burned with fear and dread. The dog was growling, a low, intimidating sound that brought the hair on the back of his neck and on his arms to stand on end. It began pawing at the side of his shelter - right where his head was, as if it could smell his fear and tears and delighted in discovering it.

"Mummy, Daddy, please help me!" he cried, and yelped when the pawing immediately turned into clawing and the growls evolved into all out snarling. The cardboard wouldn't stand much of a chance against it, if it really wanted to get in - and it was already shredding in some parts. "Please, doggy - go away!" he gasped.

The dog gave an angry roar and before Harry knew what had happened, he was being thrown to the ground on his side with the remains of the cardboard crumpled around him, a huge, hard head having rammed into the side of the box. His side throbbed and pulsed with pain, but he knew better than to scream. He had to get away - the dog was out of its mind and intent on hurting him, at the most ready to sink its teeth into something convincingly rabbit-like and go for the kill.

Harry looked around wildly for the exit to the alley, heart racing much like a rabbit's would in the worst possible way, and gasped in a short fortifying breath before launching himself from the pile of shredded cardboard and to the only means of escape. He pushed his tired legs to cooperate and move as fast as they could, feeling the hot, wretched, stinky breath of the dog on the back of his neck, and hurtled around the sharp corner that acted as the mouth of the alleyway. 

He could hear its sharp claws clacking and scraping at the concrete as it rounded the corner after him, following along so close behind him it almost touched his back with every second lunging step. 

Harry had no idea where he was going other than forward. He was in pain, exhausted, and above all, losing control in his legs to keep them moving. But he was one thing that the dog wasn't; he was nimble and quick. And he used this nimbleness to dart around corners and navigate his way through the rubbish bins and bags strewn around. It was the only weapon he had in his arsenal that was guaranteed to work - and it did. The dog wasn't as close as it'd been just minutes before, but he could still feel its hungry presence hot on his heels.

He couldn't afford to stop for a breather, despite almost running out of breath there and then.

Out of sheer force of habit, Harry glanced behind him just as he rounded an incredibly sharp corner. He faltered in absolute shock as he spotted the dog that was dead-set on killing him; it was absolutely huge! Twice as big as the usual rubbish bin and bulkier than any dog he'd ever seen or heard of! 

And it was coming right at him with its maw opened greedily as if to scoop him up and swallow him whole, eyes staring straight at him like liquid pools of hungry gold ready to devour. 

He couldn't help it, he screamed out his gut-clenching fear and anger at the injustice of being mauled to death by a mountainous wild dog.

"Oh, and what is this now?" an unfamiliar feminine voice lilted over his shoulder, and he jerked around to see a tall, statuesque blonde woman near enough standing over him in the shadows. She was merely looking at him with peculiar pale eyes, much too big to be in her head, but looking all the while prettier for it. "A child? Out at this time of night? My, times really aren't changing at all," she mused in that smoky voice.

Harry's heart almost ruptured with relief, even though the age old saying about talking to strangers came floating to mind. She was an adult, and adults knew what to do when being chased by big dogs that could swallow an obese bulldog whole. "P- please help me, Miss!" he rasped out painfully around the fear lodged in his throat, truly uncaring for the little space left between himself and the strange woman. He was far too aware of the little space he'd gained between himself and the gigantic dog. "There's a huge dog chas- chasing me!" 

Against his earnest wishes, the woman peered cautiously around the corner, her incredibly long and straight shining hair falling over his shoulder in a waterfall of silvery silk as she did so. He heaved in air like a dying man, unconsciously relaxing against the woman even as his insides quivered with fright at his near death experience. But not all was right just yet. There was something not quite right about the woman, he reckoned when enough air had gotten to his brain and he could think a little clearer. She was too refined to be somewhere like here, dressed in her expensive feeling clothes and smelling of the sweet, rich perfume that clouded around him so pleasantly, easing him from the throes of nearly being frightened to death. 

He didn't realize just how relaxed he'd become until his back hit the tough brick of the wall and his legs began to lose feeling. He gasped in surprise at the chilling cold seeping through his shirt, knowing that he was about to fall by the way the rough bricks scraped at his skin through the thin materiel, but before his body could even contemplate slipping down further, he was up in the woman's steely arms before he could blink. 

It was almost just as bad as leaning against the wall; she was nearly just as cold and hard in a way that seemed impossible. And yet, despite his discomfort and wariness with how strangely inhuman she seemed, he was still frightfully limp against her imposing figure, head laying trustingly on her shoulder and his arms a weak loop around her upper arms. 

He couldn't move a muscle to get away from her, despite inwardly trying his hardest to. He didn't want to be near her, she'd scared away even the rabid dog that had chased him, and anything as big and bad as that that got scared of a woman like this? It meant that she was something _worse_.

He was beyond the point of being scared and right into the territory of being petrified. He didn't know this woman, and yet she seemed as indestructible as the earth below them.

"Oh, dear sweet one," she crooned into his ear, breath uncharacteristically cold and sweet smelling. She was swiping an elegantly long hand through his long, messy locks, and Harry's mind was going blank at the gentle motions. "The dog is not there anymore. You are safe with me, I promise. But, where are your parents? Where do you live?" 

"Not here," he mumbled weakly, wriggling his fingers to get the feeling back into his body. He needed to get back to Privet Drive, to get back to his cupboard. He didn't like it out here – especially with all the crazy things like that dog and the woman holding him. "Don't know them."

A pair of incredibly smooth, cold lips pressed very softly onto the round of his cheek at that, but he couldn't do a thing to show his surprise at the touch - nor his dismay. "I am so very sorry, dearest," he heard her murmur into his skin, just as much as he felt it. There was something sharp in her mouth; one of those piercings the teenagers were wearing in rebellion, perhaps? "I understand your pain more than you think, for I too was abandoned on the streets by my family when I was but a child, and I have yet to forget their grievance against me. Even after three and a half centuries between us, the pain of my past still stings like it did that very day."

Harry whimpered, flailing his head to the side in one last bid for freedom. He wasn't stupid, he knew exactly how many years she'd meant by 'three and a half centuries'. But he couldn't see how she could look and feel so young and still be that old. No one had ever reached past a century old, but for her to be three hundred and fifty?

She must be a freak like him, then.

"How old are you, my sweet?" she asked, almost casually, if not for the inflection in her voice that told him she was considering something not exactly polite and nice. "You seem a bit young to be wandering the streets in a place like this, and at this time no less. Parents or no."

"Eight," he gasped, twitching as her hand tightened around a fistful of his hair. "I'm eight."

"And what an age it is to be,” she mused pleasantly. “I am Isabella De Contessa, and I am twenty-three years old. And your name would be..?"

"H- Harry."

"Well, little Harry, I very sincerely hope that you will forgive me for what I am about to do," she said, very gently, and tightened her grip on his head, flexing her arm around his waist like the grip of a python. "I cannot bear to think of doing this to someone so alike to me, in past and emotion, but I am afraid that I am far too hungry to continue going on without. At least you will be out of your misery... Unlike myself. Consider this a blessing in disguise."

Harry's heart was beating faster than ever, tattooing an impossible beat into his skin as he felt the woman's velvet mouth press against the soft skin of his vulnerable neck in a morbid, macabre kiss. It brought so many tinglings of wrongness and apprehension ringing throughout him, so many instincts thrumming to the surface that he wanted to just kick her and run - to get away before whatever terrible act that proceeded after that kiss took place.

Violence wasn't inherently in his nature, it had to be coaxed out of him by extreme circumstances, but this - this made him want to fight and beat the woman back as violently as he'd wanted to do to the dog. He whimpered when he felt the sharp thing in her mouth catch and pinch at his skin again, but this time it didn't stay in just one place for a brief moment. What he supposed was the metal piercing was spread out in a curiously crescent moon shape on his skin, and it was so sharp he didn't know how it hadn't nicked his cheek before when it had grazed him.

And then he felt true _pain_.

He gasped out a ragged scream of agony as the metal sunk deeply into the soft flesh of his throat, a river of boiling hot liquid bursting from the white-hot site and gushing down his neck and shoulder in an unstoppable torrent that just kept on pouring. But her mouth never left his throat despite it, and he swore he could feel her swallowing - gulping down the liquid as if she were a severely dehydrated woman in a desert and had just discovered a pool of cool, fresh water.

And while he was suffering the agony of her guzzling him down like a tall glass of water, other pains in his body were making themselves known. He couldn't feel his feet and legs, and the arm around his torso was crushing him unrelentingly into the mass of stone holding him up. He was trapped.

"Help - me!" he gurgled desperately over the horrendously loud, hummingbird thudding in his ears, and the equally as desperate gasping the woman was making from his throat - as if she was drowning in him, and happily so. "Help!"

Everything was going dark - an array of colored spots danced chaotically in his vision, and he could no longer feel his hands. He could feel nothing but the harsh pulling sensation at his neck, the feeling of tiny hooks yanking at his insides as if she were trying to suck them out of his neck, too. He felt nauseous – drained of energy, thought and – well, blood. 

And then the metal was yanked out of his aching, burning throat and a snake-like hiss echoed in his burning ear. He must have said something alarming to the woman, however jumbled and disjointed his voice was in his own ears, for she loosened the hand in his hair enough to pet at it again as if he were an animal.

".. back for you," he was just barely able to hear her say over the white noise clogging his ears. "It is no dog, little Harry. It is a filthy, flea-bitten, mongrel _Werewolf_ that has been stalking you."

Air bubbled wetly on his lips, and Harry was strangely startled to know that it was blood. Whatever had been in her mouth had been long enough to go straight through however many layers of skin to get to the inside of his throat. Either that, or he was leaking blood everywhere. He was in a haze of pain and muted terror, the point he knew came before death itself, and he felt as if he was dangling over a precipice - something he knew he wouldn't be able to come back from if he fell. 

 _Werewolf. She'd said_ _Werewolf!_

"Worry not, dearest. I will not let it infect you," the woman promised solemnly, and Harry could feel the cold press of air sinking into the red fluid that was still slowly trickling down his side, unchecked. They were moving as if she were twirling him round in circles, but in Harry's barely lucid mind, he supposed that making sure her back wasn't vulnerable was probably a good idea.

And then Harry saw it.

The mass of heavily muscled, furred limbs was lurking in the shadows by an overstuffed rubbish bin, as big and dangerous as it had been when chasing him - and it was staring right at him as if it knew he was watching it. For a split second, Harry didn't know if he'd actually just seen it look from him to the rigid woman cradling his dangling form and back or not - at least, until it leaped out of the shadows with its great maw wide open and legs extended out with claws exposed, all aiming for the woman attached to him. It was a ghost for all of the sound it made.

Harry didn't have enough energy in him to scream, not even when it collided with the woman and sent them tumbling to the ground in a heap of tangled limbs - the woman a writhing mess of shrieking, spitting and hissing, like an animal gone wild on top of him. The weight of just her on him felt like an adult elephant, despite her slight look, but with the dog - the _Werewolf_ , it was like an entire circus crushing him into the punishing gravel.

"I will kill you!  _Votre destin est à portée de main!_ " spat the blonde viciously, howling in agonized anger as the wolf slashed at her porcelain skin with wicked sharp claws, tearing ferociously at her upper body and the back of her neck in powerful strokes that made Harry want to scream and cry from just from hearing it alone. “ _Putain de mutt, j'apprécierai ... Aaah! Enlever votre gorge avec mes dents!”_

Harry wheezed as the woman's pointed elbow dug into his ribs with the force of a lorry and opened his mouth to gasp in some much needed air through his numb lips, seeing as his nose simply wasn't going to cut it with so much weight on his chest. It was on his second try breathing through the pain when something wet splattered thickly and generously into his mouth, like a pump full of deceptively sweet-smelling hand soap, and he coughed and choked on the acrid taste of whatever it was - the cloying sweetness that was overpowering in both smell and taste.

Whatever it was tasted strongly of rotten raspberries and tickled at his tongue, but it was thin and poured like oil down his throat, sticking to his skin like it was trying to mold into him. It was a chore to get it all down so he could breathe again without whatever it was getting in his lungs - and boy, did he wish he hadn't.

Agony worse than anything he'd ever felt in his life, even the strange woman's bite, pierced through him like a bowstring snapping into place, his spine stiffening and curving upward as every nerve in his body caught flame and was twisted and smashed about mercilessly. He cried out wetly, gasping raggedly and flailing uncontrollably under the woman's struggling body. It was too much, he didn't know what was happening - _it was too much!_

He vaguely heard the woman give another shrieking hiss as the wolf bit down on something or other, before a rush of air crashed down on his suddenly exposed person as she was yanked from him; his only shield against the Werewolf. But he couldn't bring himself to care much, not when the world was a haze of pain and darkness.

Something freezing cold snuffled at his torso, covered in sticky wet blood as it was, and nosed at the broken capillaries under his skin where the woman's arm had been. He grunted and whimpered helplessly when his arm struck out at whatever it was, and something far bigger than a dog's paw crushed it to the ground angrily, a growl of annoyance escaping the thing in a cloud of fog that swallowed the rest of his vision. He could taste the stuff he'd swallowed just before on its breath.

 _"NO! Qu'est-ce que tu fais?!"_  

Never ending rows of teeth slashed into the flesh of his upper torso, right above his galloping heart, like hot knives sliding through butter, savaging his already torn up body mercilessly and bringing about even more blood than what should have been possible - before it too was gone in a rush of cold air, the teeth in his flesh yanked out in one great heave that also pulled strips of his skin with them. The sounds of enraged snarls, furious roaring, snake-like hissing, spitting, and agonized howling echoed dully in his ears, but Harry couldn't focus enough to pinpoint where they were coming from; above him, below, beside. He was buried in a world of pain and horror, his body numb to everything but the unrelenting inferno raging on inside, tearing at his veins and nerves like the Devil's pincers. 

The world was on fire and he was slipping fast into the darkness that beckoned him with awaiting hands that knew all too well how to soothe his aches and pains. But it seemed as if the fire wouldn't relinquish its hold on him - it was far too strong and he too weak to disobey its commanding, destructive path through his body. Tears too cold to be his were leaking from his eyes, sliding wetly down and past his temples and into his hair.

It wasn't fair.

A century later, boiling hot, elegant hands cupped his face cautiously, feeling at his forehead and sweeping his hair back from his face - before they froze in place on his sweaty skin and quickly retreated. He heard a lilting feminine voice cursing frantically above him, felt the air moving as those hands slid under his back and the backs of his legs and hauled him upward to the heavens. And then they were setting him down again on a freezing, hard, gritty surface and snatched away from his skin like he was contagious.

A glance from his rolling, fuzzy eyes told him he'd been moved further into the alley – where it was even darker and dirtier than where he'd been before. His heart thudded weakly in distress.

“H- help..” he struggled to say, crying what was left of his energy as he listened to his lungs wheeze in and out wetly, even as the world was a blur and the oppressing white noise was crowding in his ears. “Please – hel-p..”

"Do not beg me, Harry, I cannot help you. You are dying and this is what Lady Fate had divined for you, from the moment you had met me," he heard the woman say to him, but it sounded as if she were at the opposite end of a tunnel rather than right in front of him. He fancied that she sounded sad – upset for him, seeing as the blame for his current situation laid solely at her feet. "I am sorry, I didn't mean for you to die a painful death. I had meant for you to be happy at least one more time – that you would fade rather than suffer. For this injustice, I beg your forgiveness in the never-ending lands of the resting. But I cannot help you, sweet one."

Harry gasped weakly for air, unable to formulate a reply in his quickly wilting mind as his furiously fluttering heart twinged and twisted behind his aching, straining lungs. He felt dry and too hot, like he was slowly being roasted from the inside out. Nothing was making sense - when had he fallen into this nightmare?

He cried weak tears, a sobbing wheeze escaping him on every other breath as the world turned topsy-turvy and danced wicked circles around him. It was like he was surrounded by so many things, but left alone at the same time; memories of living with the Dursleys, of having a horrible life up to this point. The dissatisfaction burned at him, just as viciously as the pain in his body. 

He was wrung dry, but it all still seemed to escape him in unforgiving torrents anyway.

“I cannot bear to see a child die in such a manner! Forgive me, please, but I cannot!” he heard her cry over his own fear and pain, saw her stumbling away from him like a glowing shadow from behind his fluttering eyelids. _“Pas plus!”_

Harry's breathing was little more than a wet wheezing sound, by this point, and if the woman hadn't seen his death in the knowledge of what Werewolf venom did to a Muggle, it was the terrified look in those rolling emerald gem eyes that solidified his fate for him. His young blood stained her just as much as it sustained her barely beating heart, and flushed her skin a healthy pink that gave the suggestion of a living person. 

“I am sorry,” Isabella whispered to the little boy once more, teal eyes flashing her sadness to the audience of none, before she spun on her heel and flitted from the alleyway – already on the hunt for more blood as the hunger within remained unsatisfied, the painful death of the tiny boy she'd just fed on shoved to the back of her mind, even as the evidence of her battle with the Werewolf for him stung in the sharp wind.

She was sure the boy's body would be found in the morning and he would be taken to the morgue, where he would remain unnamed and classed as a mysterious death. A funeral in which none attended but the necessary Church Minister and the Police officials that had found him would be held, and no one would remember the short life of a unique boy that had suffered so greatly. 

It was a pity that the boy would die, but one as young as herself couldn't identify any differentiation between a justifiable death, and a needless one. And so she hunted, and so she forgot the boy with the astonishing emerald eyes - whom had so captured her as to goad her into feeding from a child.

She willed herself to forget. 

**-oOoOoOo-**

Translation using the (more than probably incorrect) Google translator:  
- ** _Votre destin est à portée de main!_** ** _  
_** (Your doom is at hand!)

- _ **Putain de mutt, j'apprécierai ... Aaah! Enlever votre gorge avec mes dents!  
**_ (You fucking mutt, I will enjoy- Aaah! Ripping your throat out with my teeth!)

 _- **Qu'est-ce que tu fais?!** **  
**_ (What are you doing?!)

- ** _Pas plus!  
_** (No more!)


	7. Die A Happy Man (Boy)

  **Die A Happy Man (Boy)**

 _ **Friday**_ _ **,** _ _ **19th**_ _ **of August,** _ _ **1988.** _ _ **  
** _ ****Room 214, Intensive Care Unit, Royal Surrey Hospital.** **

Harry was awake before it really registered in his mind that he was conscious. It hadn't been a hassle to wake up as it had been before, even if it hadn't taken much to wake him up in the Dursley household in the past. It was just a simple matter of opening his eyes, no pep-talk or encouragement needed to do so. Although, there was a slight breeze puffing at his face with an uncomfortable regularity.

It struck him as odd. Though, any thoughts regarding that was quickly shoved to the side when he finally took in his surroundings.

He was in a small white-washed room dotted here and there with technology and awkwardly stiff chairs and furniture, all white and uninviting, of course. The window beside him was covered in a thin sheet, as if the room was in a disrepair of some sort, and the television hanging on the wall opposite was of a slightly higher caliber than what the Dursleys have – and was thankfully off. His ears were stuffed with a blank white-noise that made his head throb with discomfort, and he didn't think he could handle any of the shows Dudley watches.

But his attention was quickly taken in by the machines and the odd coat hanger that held pouches of liquid suspended almost above him, that were running on either side of him. One would beep in a monotonous rhythm, each sound making a luminous green line bob on the screen in sharp towers, and the other looked like a soundless accordion or a bellow, sliding up and down in a jar that obviously held in any sound it made.

Or so he thought, until the white-noise cleared enough for him to hear the muffled suction and creak of the material. It was moving almost in time to the air blowing on his face – which was a route of thin plastic tubing that ended at his nose, he was surprised to discover.

 _I'm in the Hospital,_ he mused uncertainly, glancing around the dully lit room as if someone would jump out and explain why he was here. It was obvious where he was by the machines he was hooked up to, and the bags that were attached to the tubes that ran down into his right arm.  _But why?_

Something important niggled at the back of his mind, a frown making its way onto his face the longer it remained unclear as to what he should be remembering. He gave out a strangled groan of frustration, just as the handle on his door gave a quiet jiggle and slowly edged open, revealing a trio of what must be doctors. If the clipboards, white jackets and stethoscopes around their necks said anything.

Of the doctors were two young women and a man in his late twenties with a severe expression on his face, as if he was annoyed with something and that happened to be the girls behind him. The girls were stiff and unsure, a noticeable edge of worry and anxiety eking out of them as if they were unsure whether they should be standing in his doorway or not, and that made Harry's discomfort spike a little. Why should they be so afraid? Had something happened to him that affected everyone else? Was he diseased – dying? Why weren't the Dursleys here, if they hated him he was still a part of their family, and family takes care of one another. He didn't like it here, it was odd, bland and incredibly impersonal.

It was bleached of every person that came here.

The two women were obviously deeply startled to see him sitting up and staring back at them, as if he should still be asleep and unable to even move. But the man was staring right back at him with unreadable eyes, a depth to the dark blue that both scared and intrigued Harry.

It was like staring into a kindred spirit, yet at a stranger at the same time.

“Hello? Are you... doctors?” he hesitantly asked them, cringing back into the stiff pillow at his shoulders when all the supposed doctors did was stare at him. Discomfort still rang true in his body, most especially in his upper torso, but if the teachers at his school had told him one thing, it was that doctors were supposed to help – just like Firemen and Policemen. But it seemed like these people weren't normal doctors.

 _Could be fakes,_ he reasoned with himself, staring at them cautiously when they edged slightly inside the room and fluttered their clipboards with nervous hands. Well, the females did, the man just stared at him as if he were an anomaly – and not a good one.  _They're not helping me like they should – like real doctors are supposed to. Maybe they're pretending to be doctors so they could sneak around and do the body stretches with patients._

Aunt Petunia had once watched a television show that had fake doctors running around in a Hospital, doing all sorts of weird things to patients that reacted just as weirdly. He remembered very vaguely the odd noises that had escaped the small television in his aunt and uncle's room – the grunts and groans of pain as one or more of them were moved in a way that looked queer to him. It'd been one of the weirdest nights in his life, because he'd been ordered to bring them a platter of edibles and two flutes of champagne very late in the evening, when he should have been locked in his cupboard for the night.

But then again, ever since that night three years ago, there'd been weekend repeats of those types of marathons and they'd sunk into his brain as 'Normal'. Sometimes the shows changed, and sometimes they didn't. Harry thought he even saw a tub of video tapes in Aunt Petunia's closet, shoved under a skewed stack of old clothes she didn't want to give to the poor and needy.

'Good for nothing, lazy Freaks', she'd call them, when he so much as attempted to ask her for bits of old clothes she wouldn't miss whenever the school had a fund-raiser for the poor. Just like him.

His words seemed to startle them out of their stupor, and they thankfully began to act like human beings long enough to come into his room. Albeit, a touch mechanically, as if they were unsure this was actually happening – that he was really awake.

“Good evening, young man,” said the male doctor, offering him a tiny close-lipped smile that looked more comfortable on that of a dog than an actual man. Harry would bet his only pair of shoes that he didn't smile often, and it was just pure luck that he'd decided to be nice to him then. But it certainly wouldn't take much to cheese him off, though, so he had to tread very lightly. Like he had to around Uncle Vernon on the nights before a huge meeting at work. “You are currently residing in Royal Surrey Hospital in the Critical condition ward. My name is Jonathon Cambry, and I am one of the doctors that have been treating you. My colleagues, here, are Sally Tumout and Milly Canterbury, they're only fresh out of Medical school and are currently working under me as doctors-in-training. I hope you don't mind that they will be assisting me today.”

“Uh, no,” Harry stuttered out, glancing uncomfortably between the two gobsmacked ladies that slowly edged further into the room as if afraid to break something. Namely being, him. “It's nice to meet you both,” he offered them shyly.

He knew Sally, the blonde woman, was unnerved by him by the way her lips tipped up in a tense smile and she tipped her head in acknowledgment, looking supremely uncomfortable being near him and all-too satisfied to be keeping her silence. Her brunette friend, Milly, on the other hand, grinned and nodded her head, saying, “Nice to meet you, too, kind sir,” in a very cheerful manner.

Harry liked her.

“And what is your name?” Jonathon prompted him, when he remained silent. The man seemed slightly impatient with him – not a good sign by far. It was more likely for him to smack Harry over the head with the clipboard under his arm than to help him at this point.

He felt like hiding away under the bed than talking to his supposed doctors, which acted more like nervous children than trained professionals. Students or no.

“Harry. Harry Potter, Sir,” Harry informed him hesitantly.

Jonathon seemed to freeze in place, pen hovering over the paper on his clipboard as if genuinely shocked into stillness. But that couldn't be, because there was nothing  _shocking_  about his name, at all; except for how truly  _abnormal_  it was, as Aunt Petunia would say. Harry began to think that he should've used another name, as Jonathon remained silent for another tense moment, eyeing him somewhat cautiously with those unreadable blue eyes. It wasn't very long before he hummed very loudly in disinterest, clearing his throat uncomfortably, and began scribbling something down on his clipboard – the two women following his lead almost immediately. 

It was a bit maddening – the sound of so many pens scribbling on paper, but that was apparently what doctors did. Although, either one of them could be drawing a funny picture of him instead of trying to diagnose him. But, despite his head insisting that they're pretend doctors, there was one question that begged to leave his lips. One that he was sure they could answer.

“Why am I here?” he couldn't help but ask.

“You were brought in by a small squad of policemen early yesterday morning, Mr Potter,” said Jonathon, without looking up from his clipboard as if it apparently held all of the answers to life. He was probably sketching something along the lines of, _'Harry Potter stinks'_ with big piles of smelly dog droppings below it. “You had been discovered by a wandering salesman scavenging for something or other, unconscious in an alleyway and without 4 and 1/2 of the 8 pints of blood the human body needs to live. You'd been nearly catatonic by that stage, much less a step down from mild hypothermia, and you're honestly very lucky to be alive. In the official file we have created it states, upon inspecting the wounds on your person, that you were attacked by a rather vicious dog and left to bleed out when you had lost consciousness. You've been tested for rabies and any diseases of that sort, but you'll happy to note that you're very healthy – if a bit malnourished, severely exhausted and completely in need of a blood transfusion. Do you not remember any of this?”

Harry merely stared at him, unable to say anything or think – at all. He'd been left for dead in an alleyway by a stray dog, which had tried to kill him for absolutely no reason at all. Dogs may not like him – Aunt Marge's prized dog, Ripper, being one of them, but none of them had ever tried to kill him any way like what Jonathon had said the stray dog had.

Was he so unlikable that even stray dogs would go out of their way to end him?

“Mr Potter?” a voice prompted, and Harry blinked himself back into focus to see Milly staring him in concern. “Would you like something to drink? A phone call to your family? I'm sure they must be very worried about you.”

“I don't know their number,” Harry admitted, to the surprise of no one, closing his aching eyes in shame as he felt their judgment digging under his skin – especially that of Jonathon. He felt like he was being skewered under his gaze. “They never taught me it.”

“Well, what are their names?” Milly continued on, not unkindly. She smiled at him gently when he looked up at her oddly, mystified. “We may have them on file here, and every patient provides their details in the case of another accident or emergency,” she explained patiently.

“Confidentiality states -” Sally began irritably.

“They're his family,” Milly interrupted her staunchly. “Any confidentiality is therefore negated. You should know this, Sally. If you want to go about picking everyone apart for not remembering something from Medical school, you should first learn that you're not all-knowing, either--!”

“That is quite enough, Miss Canterbury, Miss Tumout,” Jonathon cut in smoothly, not at all sounding as angry as he should have at being ignored by his students. “I should think our patient deserves some peace and quiet. After all, he has been through a rather intense ordeal not too long ago. I suggest you both adjourn to the cafeteria and get yourselves a cup of tea, to refresh your minds for your next shift. I believe I can handle Mr Potter's no doubt boundless questions on my own.”

Sally nodded rather stiffly and made a swift exit, white jacket snapping out behind her like a shrunken cape and leaving the door open behind her – rather considerately, as Milly seemed to hesitate, dithering on whether she should be making her own way out or opting to stay behind to help. She gave Harry another somewhat gentle look, before ducking her head and closing the door behind her on her way out. Leaving both Doctor Cambry, and Harry alone in his empty room.

Harry couldn't decide if he should try and make an escape or not. The supposed 'doctor' was weird and not anything like what a doctor was supposed to be. He was too quiet and intimidating – like one of Uncle Vernon's business associates that came over for dinner one evening every other week; unimpressed by everything he did, even his special meals and meek, subservient attitude.

Jonathon Cambry looked like he wouldn't pick up a scalpel even if it was solid gold and bejewelled with rubies, emeralds and diamonds.

“What is your age, Harry?” Jonathon asked, even as he made a quiet ruckus in snagging himself an uncomfortable chair from the corner of the room, and dragging it to Harry's bedside where he sat and stared at him as if he were a science project. If the heart monitor beeped a little louder than before, it was neither here nor there.

Harry was unable to keep a frown from appearing at the doctor's forwardness. “I'm eight,” he answered quietly.

Oddly enough, a pang of déjà vu rocked through him, but he couldn't place in his mind where he'd said that recently. He hadn't talked to very many people other than the Dursleys - and that was mainly asking questions about what they wanted done around the house. Or attempting to defend himself from Dudley's unfailing ability to get him in trouble no matter what he'd done.

Jonathon leaned back in his seat, sliding into a casual position that belied his intense gaze and steepled fingers. He seemed mildly unimpressed by him – unsurprisingly. “Eight years old and playing around in dirty disgusting alleyways. And just what were you doing out so late at night for a dog to attack you? Did you attempt to hurt it in any way?”

“No!” Harry exclaimed indignantly.

“No?” Jonathon questioned lowly, dark blue eyes roaming over his face as if searching for an answer to his horrible questions. “I do believe you're withholding something very important from me, Harry. That could get you in trouble if you lie to the wrong person, you know. I'm your doctor, I'm here to heal you and get you better, not to hurt you.”

_I'll believe that when you actually help me._

“But you're not doing what a normal doctor does,” Harry couldn't help but point out. He thought the man looked a little too comfortable sitting beside him, like he was one of those kids who skipped class to laze around the playground. It made him nervous that a 'doctor' would do that when he was apparently in the Intensive ward. “You're s'posed to check me over – my eyes, my mouth and my ears, to see if somethings changed or gotten worse. You're not helping me.”

“You're not in any obvious pain, and your heart hasn't changed in speed other than five minutes ago, when you became..  _nervous_ ,” Jonathon stated casually, smiling rather lazily at him as he cringed back even further into his pillow. “I think you should try distracting me with something more worthwhile if you don't want to concede that you did lie, Harry.”

“But I'm not lying,” Harry protested.

“Then tell me what you were doing out on the streets that night, when you so obviously have a family that have a perfectly able roof over their heads. Did you run away?” Jonathon drawled boredly.

Harry scowled and turned his head away in frustration, deciding to glare at the wall rather than the man that mucked around with his health. There was something about the man that just irked him – that drew out all the bad qualities in him. He could barely remember anything as it was, and the man decided he apparently knew everything that happened! “My cousin was playing around and decided to chase me down the street – I didn't realize how far we'd gone until I lost them and got lost in the slums,” he grumbled, gnashing his teeth together a bit angrily. “I tried to go home, but I just got even more lost and I ended up having to find shelter. Happy?”

“Not exactly,” the man murmured, smiling blandly when Harry scowled at him. “And the dog? When did he come into play if you'd found shelter?”

“I didn't say it was  _good_ shelter,” Harry snapped in annoyance, to Jonathon's unending amusement. “I'd found an empty box when it got dark and I stayed in it. It must've been the dog's house, because I woke up when it tried to get in.”

“Dogs are rather territorial, you know.”

Harry's shoulders hunched forward and a growl of pure irritation rumbled in his chest, unbeknownst to him echoing in the room. “Yeah, well it chased me around the bloody block and didn't quit until someone found me!” Harry snapped sulkily. He was brought up short by Jonathon's silence.

 _Until someone found me,_ he mused queerly.

_"How old are you, my sweet?"_

The voice was sweet and echoed in his mind like honey, so husky and low that it made his brain practically stutter to a stop in shocked recognition. He knew it from somewhere – it was hard to forget something like that, anyway.

_"You seem a bit young to be wandering the streets in a place like this, and at this time no less. Parents or no."_

_"Eight,"_ he heard himself gasping, oddly enough. _"I'm eight."_

 _“_ _And what an age it is to be,”_ _the voice_  mused pleasantly, sounding vaguely amused to him now. _“I am Isabella De Contessa, and I am twenty-three years old. And your name would be..?"_

_"H- Harry."_

A flash of smooth porcelain skin and peculiar pale eyes, before something crushed the skin of his neck so thoroughly and painfully that his neck throbbed dully from under layers upon layers of thick gauze. The wound itself seemed aware that he was thinking of such a thing, and a hand flew to rest over the painful flesh before he could think twice about it in front of Doctor Cambry.

“Harry?” Jonathon prodded impatiently.

It was too impossible to be real – too unrealistic. And yet the evidence was burned into his neck, pulsing smugly as if it were laughing at him.

“A woman, she – she bit me,” Harry stuttered in shock, looking imploringly to the doctor that was now sitting rigidly in his seat, despite the casual position he was still in. “I wasn't attacked by a dog? But you said I was!”

Jonathon seemed to stiffen even further in his seat, his face hardening very noticeably from the lazy grin it'd been before to an impassive mask. “There are multiple lacerations wounds and marks relating to that of a canine on the area of your upper torso,” he said unambiguously, cut and dry as if listing something from a book that was fact. Harry didn't know whether to cry or scream. “Now, you mentioned that someone bit you... _Who_  bit you? What did they look like?” he asked lowly.

“She said her name was – was Isabella Day Count-tessah,” Harry rushed out awkwardly, shocked as much as he was afraid that Jonathon wouldn't believe him and call him a Freak for dreaming up something so crazy. Uncle Vernon would have him locked up in his cupboard for weeks for even mentioning a woman with sharp teeth taking a nibble out of anyone – or the word that immediately sprang to mind from listening to the countless television shows Dudley and his friends watch; Vampire. “She was pale and very pretty, and she had light blue eyes and long hair. She was tall and strong, too. But I couldn't see anything else, it was too dark.”

Jonathon was staring at him in a stony silence, face hard and incredibly harsh under the dim lighting drifting from the standard light above his bed. “Isabella De Contessa?” he asked blankly.

Harry gave a meek nod. “I ran into her in the alley when the dog was chasing me,” he said quietly. “She helped me escape the dog – at least, I think she did. Then she bit me.”

“You're certain that she, Isabella De Contessa, attacked and _bit_ you?” Jonathon asked, face unreadable but for the tense downturn of the corner of his lips. "Was the cause of the damage sustained to your throat?”

Harry merely nodded, unsure what else he could say to make it sound more believable.

“Can you list the symptoms that you're currently experiencing?” Jonathon asked intently. He grunted and gave his clipboard a slight waggle when Harry eyed him suspiciously. “You quite adamantly claimed that I wasn't taking care of you before. Please allow me to do so, now.”

Harry frowned, but conceded with a small nod, satisfied when the apparent doctor readied his pen on the paper to take anything down. “My throat feels itchy and tingly, and it hurts when I swallow,” he began reluctantly, quietly sighing when the pen began its irritating scratching. “My chest is achy where the dog bit me, my eyes and head feel gritty. My ears hurt when there's loud noise –”

Jonathon glanced up at him with sharp eyes. “Noises such as what?”

“Your – your pen, and too many people talking.”

The doctor hummed and went back to scratching at his paper, despite what Harry had just said about his ears being delicate to the chalky scratching. He either didn't notice Harry's wincing, or merely ignored him. Harry would bet that it was the latter over the former.

“Anything else?” Jonathon prodded without looking up.

Harry swallowed and nodded. “I'm really hungry and thirsty.”

Jonathon stopped writing – seemed to stop breathing altogether, actually. “'Hungry'?” he repeated flatly. “Well.. I suppose that would be a normal symptom after the ordeal you've gone through. Most typically are famished after a blood transfusion, mostly because their bodies are compensating for the lack of blood, and you had lost a mighty portion of yours. Hunger is a normal thing.”

Food didn't exactly sound at all appealing to him, Harry reckoned, after giving a bit of thought to the usual food he had at the Dursleys. Of what could be awaiting him when Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon came to pick him up. It made his stomach twist and churn to even think about the hefty portions of not entirely healthy, mostly fattening and greasy foods the three blonde's ate of a day. It was a deterrent rather than appealing to his gurgling stomach, like it had been in the past.

“I'm not really hungry for food, actually,” he murmured quietly, a bit green about the gills.

Jonathon's brows furrowed as his frown became even more pronounced. He sighed, dropping the clipboard to his lap to rub at the bridge of his nose and his puckered forehead with tense fingers. “This makes things a little more difficult than I first thought,” he groaned wearily. “Do you remember ingesting anything suspicious during the attack perchance?”

Harry pursed his lips in concentration, casting his mind back to the blurry attack and the woman. He could hear his own gasps for air, smell the panic clogging the air as the vicious dog attacked them and feel the woman struggling on top of him like a writhing tank of snakes. He remembered the pressure crushing his ribs down, the fear that stemmed from the roots of his soul to the heart racing away in his chest. She'd been pushed down on him, forced between protecting him and defending herself from the dog attacking them, and she hadn't had much choice in making him any more comfortable than the ground could.

He remembered that his mouth had been open at one point or another, and something wet and oily had been spurted into it. It'd been unexpectedly sweet and disgusting all at the same time; sour, sweet and acidic. The taste of it in his memory was enough to send the taste-buds on his tongue reeling in distaste.

“I.. swallowed something, yeah,” he admitted, frowning bemusedly when the man's pale pallor turned a shocking pale gray and turned his head away from him. All he could see of the man's face was the clenching of a roughly shaved jaw and the flutter of eyelashes. “Is there something wrong with me?” he asked hesitantly, when the doctor seemed likely to stay in that position.

Jonathon looked at him then, and it was with something akin to pity on his face, so much so that it looked positively damning. “I'm so very sorry, Harry,” he said grimly, and Harry twitched at the words, foggy mind tumbling to slot them into a memory that an Isabella De Contessa seemed to take center charge of. “Yes, there's something wrong with you, and not something that can be fixed at this Hospital or any near us. But I'm going to take you somewhere very important, some place where you can be helped, and by very knowledgeable people that have the resources necessary.”

Harry stared at him uncomprehendingly for one strained moment, seeming to sense something that the man had purposefully left out. “I'm not going home again, am I?” he asked, but it was more of a statement than a question. He knew the answer just by looking into his doctor's eyes; they were devoid of anything at all positive.

Jonathon gave his head a slow shake, blue eyes flashing sympathy despite his steadily hardening features. “I apologize, but no,” he muttered. “What happened to you was a horrendous act, to be certain, but you were never meant to survive it. To have you sitting before me with the exact symptoms of a newly turned fledgling – and I use that term  _lightly_ , is as worrisome as it is illegal.”

Harry blinked. “I'm sorry, but, what's illegal? And what do you mean by _flegling_?” he questioned queerly, grimacing in disgruntlement at the last word so comically that it brought a small flicker of amusement to the man's eyes.

“ _Fledgling._ And I can't tell you everything here, Potter,” Jonathon told him dryly, relaxing his shoulders slightly as if relieved that something had broken the tense atmosphere. Harry was certainly glad for it, himself. “Your future isn't exactly set in stone, now is it? I can't have my superiors knowing that I've told you our secrets when you're not even supposed to exist in our world. Not even wizards know about the goings on in our society – nor how it even works. It'd be almost equivalent to treason.”

“What do you mean by _wizards_?” Harry jumped at the chance to ask, bemused and very much interested at the unique words the man was using. He could swear he'd heard that word from the Dursleys before, and he just about begged to know what it meant. Was it like Merlin and King Arthur? Or was it slang for policemen? _Special_ policemen? “And if I'm not s'posed to be here – and I still might not be, wouldn't it be alright for you to tell me anyway?”

An amused smirk pulled at the man's face. “Nice try, Potter,” he said wryly, and Harry could tell the man was beginning to relax even further by the way he was seeming to act more friendly with him. It gave him hope that before his life was ended, he'd have at least one friend by his side. One that even Dudley couldn't cow away from him. “All you need to know is that Isabella De Contessa will face the consequences of her actions against you, just as you will have to. And believe me when I say that the consequences of this situation are too dire for even _me_ to ignore, seeing as I usually stay out of court procedure as much as I can. But, as they include you – a child, they need to be dealt with _immediately_ _._ ”

Something pulled at Harry's mind, something that he hadn't picked up before from his conversation with Jonathon. And he should have before, he was very perceptive for a kid of his age – something Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia hated him for. “Why haven't you mentioned anything about the Vampires and Werewolves, Jonathon?” he asked slowly, and was gratified to see the apprehension and shock seep into the man beside him – making him stiffen and clutch at the clipboard with tense hands. “I didn't know they existed before for sure, but even I knew what they were and I'm only eight.”

“You must be a clever boy,” Jonathon responded lightly, despite how terribly rigid he was. “How did you come to the conclusion of such far-fetched ideas? How did you know what to look for?”

Harry smiled through the pain his memories brought to him, and was very much aware of the close gaze Jonathon had on him. “Isabella had sharp teeth that she used to drink my blood,” he said around the emotion scratching at his throat, the left-over tanginess of fear that he'd swallowed in a desperate bid for air that night echoing dully into his aching belly. “She told me that a Werewolf had been stalking me – and was about to attack us. I thought it was a dog, but it was too big to be normal.”

“You were bitten by a Werewolf, as well.”

Harry didn't bother replying at that, the pinkish gauze wrapped around his torso spoke loudly enough for him.

Jonathon exhaled loudly, and at the sound Harry's heart monitor beeped just a little louder than before. Blue eyes stared at him, unreadable. “Only you,” he muttered quietly under his breath, though not quiet enough for Harry's sharp ears not to hear him. “Only you would be caught in the crossfire for a battle over territory. It seems you're positively _destined_ for conflict.”

Harry offered a tiny, cautious shrug at the accusatory look Jonathon sent him. “My luck?”

“I'd say it was just your luck as well,” Jonathon grumbled, rolling his eyes. “If it weren't for the simple fact that it only seems to run in your family.”

Harry elected not to comment on the casual mention of his family. Instead, he focused on the fact that he most likely wouldn't even get to see them – ever, nor the Dursleys. He wouldn't be able to see anything, actually. He'd be dead for something he couldn't control.

"Do I get to say goodbye?" he asked softly, avoiding the expected pitiful look he'd get from the doctor at his side, his shoulders beginning to wilt despite the wounds on his neck and chest. He'd known the answer before he'd even asked the question.

“It's best if there's no goodbyes,” Jonathon told him quietly, and it was but scarce seconds later that the man stood from his seat and tucked his clipboard under his arm. An inconspicuous glance upward from his despondent slump gave Harry the unwelcome sight of a severe expression on the doctor's face, as he seemed to straighten his spine and don a more professional look. “I shall be back with the clothes and possessions you had arrived with, along with a spare change of clothing for you to change into before we leave.”

“But, won't people see us and get suspicious?” Harry asked him at the last second, just before the doctor could open the door.

Jonathon threw a small, tight smile back at him. “I'm one of the most trusted doctors here, Mr Potter, and for good reason. If I say that you've been forcefully discharged and they find a signature on the paperwork but no guardians, they'll take my word for it and allow me to escort you home,” he said. “Nothing will go wrong, I promise you.”

Despite the miserable events Harry knew were about to unfold in his future, he couldn't help but believe him.

**-oOoOoOo-**

Harry couldn't remember where they were. Moving around so soon after being drained of nearly all the blood in his body was putting an off spin to everything, but he had to say that it was the worst when Jonathon turned the car round one of the tricky roundabouts in the busy traffic. His eyes were blurry and gritty, despite waking up from a full day of sleep, and it gave the world a filter-gray tinge that looked more comfortable on a television screen than in his head.

“We're nearly there.”

_He's said that five times already and we haven't gotten any closer than when we left the Hospital!_

“I think I'm gonna be sick,” Harry groaned, cradling his protesting belly as best as he could while being restrained by the seat-belt. The controlled but barely legal turns, merging and all-out driving was making his belly rebel against its empty state, and if he thought his throat had been aching before – it was positively burning now, and even drier than the Sahara desert. He was looking a bit green around the gills, and if doctors knew one thing for certain, it was that vomit didn't clean easily from the insides of cars – or clothing in general.

But despite not wanting Harry to sick up on everything in sight, Jonathon seemed perfectly at ease to continue driving like a lunatic just out of the Mad-house. It was a sobering experience for Harry, who'd only ever had Aunt Petunia drive him to school and back.

Another sharp turn had Harry groaning as his queasiness ballooned up in his stomach once more.

“If you're about to sick up, tell me and I'll find somewhere to pull over,” said Jonathon sourly, unsurprisingly impatient.

“Y'know,” Harry began breathlessly, before having to pause to quell the rising sick in his throat. He swallowed thickly. “For someone who helps sick people for a living – you certainly don't _like_ ill people!”

“Of course not,” he heard Jonathon mutter over the obnoxiously loud honking of the car behind them, who'd apparently not enjoyed the sudden merging into his lane that Jonathan had just executed. “Who would like cleaning up ailing people's sickness? Not one doctor, nurse or bloody cafeteria lady I know loves their job. All about the money, isn't it.”

Harry cringed into his seat and pretended not to notice the very same car roaring up beside and ahead of them, giving them a gesture that Jonathon sneered at. That was the fourth person to have done that in the hour they'd driven around, and if they reached their destination in the next five seconds, it couldn't be sooner.

“Why work there if you don't want to help people?” he asked, and happily reclined his head against the car door when they stopped at a set of traffic lights. He watched Jonathon's tense face from his somewhat awkward position, pale compared to some people walking around, but attractive for the most part in an almost _Romanesque_ way. “Why did you start working there if you hate it?”

Jonathon smirked down at him, gripping the leather on the steering wheel so tightly it squeaked in protest. “Isn't it obvious by the car you're riding in?” he asked, though it was more of a knowing statement than a question.

Harry stared at him uncomprehendingly. “My Uncle has a car like this, and he works for _Grunnings_ ,” he told him flatly.

Jonathon's thick lips turned into a sneer so fast Harry almost didn't realize it until he was all but being glared at. “There's much more benefits to working at a Hospital than with _drills_ ,” he said contemptuously. “For one, I can hurt anyone that annoys me and get away with it under the pretense of medical practice. At that stupid company, if he were to hurt someone he'd be tossed out so quickly he wouldn't have a chance to run before the coppers nabbed him. You say I hate working -”

“ _GO! THE LIGHTS GREEN, YOU FUCKING WANKER!”_

Harry didn't have enough time to right himself in his seat before Jonathon was slamming his foot to the pedal and taking off with more speed than he had the other stops, muttering angrily under his breath all the while and clenching and unclenching his fingers around the wheel – as if mentally choking someone. Harry fancied it as being every other driver on the road today, and it was again, just his luck to have to witness it.

Churning stomach firmly lodged in his lungs, Harry held on to the built-in hand guard for dear life as the man who had his life in his hands began taking corners at even more of a terrifying speed than before. There were more and more cars honking at them now, and even more obviously pissed off people yelling at them than should be possible. It wasn't for the first time that Harry wondered how on earth the man got his license to drive; a cereal box wouldn't even give the man a pretend one!

“We're gonna crash!” he cried, panic swelling up faster than a water balloon when he realized they were heading very quickly into a one-way street, already clogged up with grumbling cars and annoyed drivers. “Jonathon!” he squeaked.

Jonathon scoffed and turned down the closest street at the last second, just barely avoiding the car that was peeping around the corner. Harry swore he heard a quiet screech of metal on metal as they passed them, but Jonathon carried on carelessly – obviously ignoring the screaming of an enraged woman behind them. “We'd only crash if we hit a wall, Potter,” he said, as if it should be obvious to even the legally blind. “I'm not stupid, I know where I'm going and how to get there. Just sit tight and be patient.”

“B- but you said you didn't go there -”

“Doesn't mean I don't know the way, Harry,” Jonathon pointed out very logically, and slowly, Harry began to feel the car slow to a more acceptable speed. Even Aunt Petunia would be impressed by how gradual and smooth they were, gliding down the narrow, darkening street. “We'll be along very shortly now.”

Harry gave a relieved sigh and slowly relaxed into the soft, supple leather supporting his weary body. Thankful beyond belief that the horrible car ride was nearly over. Jonathon was one of the oddest, hormonal people he'd ever met – he could be funny and kind one second, narcissistic and contemptuous another second, and calm and aloof the other second. The man went through emotions as quickly as Dudley went through sweets.

Dudley – the Dursleys. He wouldn't be seeing them any longer, not after he faced the people that managed people like Isabella. There would be no more cleaning from nine in the morning to late at night, no more sleeping in the dusty cupboard under the stairs, no more physical punishment from Uncle Vernon – no more _Harry Hunting_.

He simply wouldn't be, and he couldn't help but wonder if his relatives would miss him – if they'd noticed him missing at all.

Something in him couldn't help but say that, no, they wouldn't have even noticed that he was missing.

“Do you think I'm a bad person, Jonathon?”

“What?”

Harry tilted his head back to look at the bemused man, uncaring for the pain the uncomfortable position forced him in. He was too melancholic to care about it by now. “Do you think I'm a bad person?” he repeated quietly. “Bad things happen to bad people, and bad things have been happening to me since I was a baby. Do you think I'm a bad person? Is this my punishment for living a bad life?”

“I don't know you nearly well enough to tell what kind of life you've led, Harry,” Jonathon began carefully, glancing warily from Harry's pensive face to the street ahead. “But I don't think you're a bad person - or that you've made bad choices, necessarily. I think bad things happen to good people to test them, to keep them on their toes and remind them that bad things are out there, and they can happen to anyone at any time given the chance.

“You just so happened to have gotten lost the day Isabella couldn't handle the thirst that comes with being what she is. Do you think you're a bad person for someone else losing control of their body? Their instincts?”

Harry slowly shook his head. “I couldn't help them -”

“And you just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Jonathon stepped in smoothly, nodding his head as if proved right. “You're not a bad person, Harry. You're just put in crummy situations where bad things happen to the wrong people.”

 _I'm put in situations where bad things happen,_ Harry thought pensively, tentatively as if Uncle Vernon would suddenly appear and give him a great whaling for even daring to think that something wasn't his fault. He relaxed almost immediately when nothing of the sort happened, and an emotion similar to annoyance trilled through him at the quiet satisfaction filling up his chest. It was such a faultless notion that Jonathon had given him that Harry didn't know whether to cry or hug the man. _Not where I cause them, like they all said. Just because bad things happen, doesn't mean that I'm the one who made them happen. Not everything is my fault!_

“I'm.. not a bad person?”

Jonathon spared him a single, blank glance, before focusing on the road once more. “No,” he said. “I don't think you have a bad bone in your body. If there was a fly buzzing around annoying a room full of people, I'd bet you would be the person to open the window and let it out.”

“I've done that before,” Harry told him quietly, and flushed a delicate pink when Jonathon smirked at him. His ears felt hot. “I've done the same thing with a mouse, just the other day! It was locked in my cupboard with me and it tried --”

“Your cupboard?” Jonathon asked with a smirk, glancing at him a little curiously. “Were you playing hide-and-go-seek with your cousin or friend, or something? Seven minutes in heaven, do they call it now?”

Harry laughed and shook his head, smiling as if they hadn't just spoken about something that had weighed on his heart for a very long time. “No!” he cried, the embarrassment in his voice unfortunately adding to Jonathon's amusement. “I couldn't sleep because I was too tired from working all day long, and the mouse was locked in with me – What's wrong?”

Jonathon was as stiff as a board in his seat, large hands clenched tightly around the steering wheel before him, which was as still as the car itself – pulled over to the curb in front of a dilapidated section of houses and buildings that loomed overhead like in the olden day television shows. Harry hadn't even noticed that they'd stopped moving, and likely wouldn't have until he'd looked at his doctor friend's face; It was perfectly blank of any emotion, so oddly juxtaposed by the incredible grip he had on the wheel.

The doctor was so stiff and silent that it almost shocked Harry when he finally spoke.

“Is it a regular occurrence in your household to be locked in a cupboard? Or exhausted from 'working so hard' all day?” he asked quietly, thick lips stiff and unyielding over his teeth, which seemed to catch at the back of his lips on every other word.

Harry thought he was hiding something.

Hesitantly, despite the misgivings his stomach was giving him, he gave a small nod. “The cupboard under the stairs is my room,” he told him quietly. “I have to work around the house to earn my keep, it's only fair since I eat all their food and make a mess of things.”

“You sound like you've rehearsed that.”

“I have,” Harry admitted, to Jonathon's obvious disbelief. “If I didn't, Uncle Vernon would have punished me, and I hate his punishments more than Aunt Petunia's. She only makes me clean the kitchen appli- applicants.”

“So they are not poor,” Jonathon growled, and Harry had to fight back a grimace at the loud squeal his steering wheel gave as his grip tightened impossibly further. “They seem to live an average life, if I know of _Grunnings_ correctly. Tell me, do they not have proportionate lodgings to house you? Are there not enough rooms?”

“Well, there's Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia's room, Dudley's first and second bedroom, and the guest room – but that's only left for Aunt Marge when she comes to say,” Harry hurried to say, but the damage seemed to have been done. Jonathon had almost torn the steering wheel from its placement on the dash, the only thing stopping him being Harry himself, who was sat very close to the could-be dangerous metal and plastic. “It's okay, honest. I'm fine with sleeping in the cupboard -”

“You shouldn't be!” Jonathon snarled, in a fashion so alike to Isabella that it stunned Harry into silence. “Fucking damn it all, Harry James Potter! Why do you allow them all to punish you for no reason?! You're a child, not a slave or House-elf! Where are your parents?”

Harry was shaking so badly the car door he was pressed against was rattling along with him. Jonathon looked like a wild beast let off a leash, his upper lip curled back to show off his white, shining teeth and the four sharp points that trailed off into tips sharper than razors.

_The metal thing in Isabella's mouth..._

“You're a Vampire?” Harry's voice quivered as fear itself threatened to choke him. He didn't want to be bitten again – he didn't want to die when he had the chance to live again. Why had he come with the impersonating doctor? He knew he was a fake! Why did he make such crappy choices?!

The silent snarl smoothed out into a severe scowl, but thankfully the teeth were concealed once more. That was all Harry was worried about. “I am,” he confirmed with a veritable hissing quality to the words. “And so are you. That's why you, a would-be concealed wizard, are going before the council no human has ever had the opportunity of seeing.”

Forget the bottom of Harry's stomach dropping out, the entire floor and ground beneath him was gone. Disappeared just like the perceptive brain he thought he'd had between his ears. “I'm a Vampire?” he asked, and if his voice was practically squeaky and choked up, Jonathon didn't point it out. “A _Vampire?_ ”

“I believe so, but it's debatable,” Jonathon grunted, before exhaling a harsh breath of wind that radiated the sweet smell Harry knew he'd smelled before. How he hadn't noticed it before, he didn't know – but he felt betrayed. “You were bitten by a Werewolf at almost the exact moment you'd taken in Isabella's blood, and that has caused some.. odd symptoms to occur. It's an almost unprecedented circumstance that none have dared to test, so it's pretty much a blank topic to our society. That's all I'm saying until we get inside.”

“Where is it?” Harry asked hoarsely.

Jonathon sighed deeply, and looked to him with shining blue eyes – an incredibly lighter shade than what they'd been just before, and Harry couldn't contain the gasp of shock at the sight. Jonathon seemed to realize, as he sighed once more and blinked his eyes shut purposefully, before looking to him with what Harry guesstimated to be his normal eye color. “Before we go in, I need to explain something very important to you, and you will do your best to take it all in – anxiety or no. Panicking won't help you get through what will happen,” he said sternly. “There's going to be more Vampires in that building than in any one of our outhouses, but you will not be harmed by anyone of them. I need you to remain calm and collected, for your benefit if not for mine. Any that we dare to bring inside the council chambers reflect upon ourselves and the company we keep, and if you have a panic attack in there, we could be ridiculed by everyone present. Humiliated, for another word.

“Now, I don't know about you, but I certainly don't need that. I've worked for too long and too hard to get myself in such a good place with the council, and if you do anything to jeopardize that, I won't be happy. Do you understand?”

Silence reigned while Harry processed the harshly spoken words, jittery from a day filled with panic, anxiety, fear, shock and above all, confirmation that what had happened two days ago had actually happened. He gave a meek nod, cowed by the severe expression on the doctor's face. “I – I'll be good,” he squeaked out. “I won't say a thing.”

“Only when you're spoken to,” Jonathon corrected him patiently. “Now, when we go in, stick close to my side and don't wander off. While you won't be hurt, that won't stop them from leading you astray and getting you into trouble. I don't care if you have to hold my hand or my coat, but you need to stay by my side.”

“Can I hold your – your hand?” Harry asked shyly, nibbling on his lower lip when Jonathon arched an eyebrow.

“Yes,” Jonathon said after a moment of contemplative silence. “But I must warn you, there's going to be some extremely diverse reactions. It's illegal to create a child Vampire, which I believe I mentioned back at the Hospital, and to bring one to the heart of Vampire goings-on is practically suicide. I'm doing something incredibly ballsy by bringing you in, and it can easily back-fire on me if you say or do something wrong.”

“I won't do anything!” Harry hurried to reassure him, almost frantically. “I'll just stand beside you and hold your hand. I won't speak unless spoken to, and I won't even look around – I'll keep my head down!”

Jonathon looked at him for a moment, as if pained by something, and Harry knew exactly what it was when pity began to show again. “You were never taken into society much, were you?” he asked softly.

Harry grimaced as the topic he wanted to avoid at all cost cropped up again and shook his head. “Only to go to school,” he admitted sourly. “They didn't like me even when I was locked in my cupboard, why would they take me out anywhere?”

“Then I shall also do my best to protect you,” Jonathon promised him softly. “I may not be anything at all fatherly in personality or instinct, but I don't want to see you humiliated or hurt. So long as you're with me, you'll be fine.”

Considering what could happen when they went inside and the reactions of the apparently numerous Vampires inside, Harry doubted Jonathon could protect him. Why would he when he'd just admitted to working long and hard to get his reputation up? Harry could crumble all of his work to bits just by opening his mouth, and the man knew it.

Besides, if he could survive a desperate Vampire and a territorial Werewolf trying their damnedest to kill him, why couldn't he survive the other Vampires inside?

“I'm ready to go in now,” he said bracingly, giving a firm nod when Jonathon peered down at him strangely. “It shouldn't be too bad if you're beside me. Right?” he reminded him.

Smiling tensely at the barely there confidence, Jonathon bobbed his head once, unbuckled himself and glided out of the car in just two sleek movements. Harry unbuckled his seat-belt carefully in case the retraction snapped back and yanked the metal over his delicate skin, and slid out of the car carefully, minding the straining muscles in his chest and neck area.

He met Jonathon on the crumbling sidewalk before one of the most condemned looking buildings he'd ever seen. The air felt chilly, unwelcoming, despite it being Summer, and it was incredibly dark by now.

And then something calloused, large and lukewarm was cradling his hand supportively, and everything negative seemed to slip away a few paces. He chanced a quick glance up to see Jonathon staring down at him kindly, smiling confidently even when their future seemed uncertain.

Jonathon had said he could get in trouble for bringing him in there, for even announcing that a child Vampire existed – him. And he could get hurt the second they stepped inside, just for living. He could also get Jonathon in trouble just by looking at the wrong person. There was nothing he could do in this situation to help his Vampire friend, but stand beside him and be quiet unless he was spoken to by their superiors.

He was nervous, his stomach felt too tense and filled with butterflies, and his head hurt just from meeting the Vampire doctor, who somehow knew of his family that didn't want a thing to do with him.

“Ready?”

Harry didn't think so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys and gals!
> 
> So this fic is getting so many reads, kudos' and comments, and I definitely haven't felt as good as I have in AGES. Literally, the beginning of a new year couldn't be a better one! I'm not sure what you guys will make of this chapter, it was rushed and barely skimmed over, so if you find an error or an inconsistency, please don't hesitate to tell me because I freaking hate inconsistencies!
> 
> Anyhow, so I've put in a link below that leads to a guy that I think Jonathon Cambry looks like. I didn't give much detail in the chapter, I know, but hopefully this picture can give you an idea as to what he could look like for you. He almost certainly looks like that for me... heh, heh.  
> https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/ed/29/6e/ed296ebbdf091e01b3da16451f92a0c6.jpg
> 
> Well, this has been one of the longer chapters I've written, and I'm honestly not running out of any inspiration for this fic just yet. Oh God, please give me hope that I won't lose any bluster for this one like I have most of the others. I really hate leaving a work unfinished. But, I'm hoping to break that curse with this story!
> 
> Wish me luck, guys! Lots of love, and I hope you all have a wonderful new year, much better than the last!


	8. (Don't) Fear the Reaper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys!
> 
> So this is one incredibly late chapter, I know. I'm not running out of any steam, but I just can't seem to find a rhythm in this chapter that I'm happy with, so I'm just posting this as is and hoping for the best.
> 
> If you guys find a mistake, please let me know and I'll fix it as soon as I can.

** (Don't) Fear the Reaper **

_ **Friday, 19th of August, 1988.** _  
**'Gerichtskammer', Head of the International Confederation for Immortally Inclined Beings.**

Harry was really starting to hate the dark.

To summarize his great dislike of it, he'd been chased from Privet Drive by who was really the bane of the Dursley household, Dudley, and eventually lost within the snaking, winding alleyways in the slums of Surrey until true darkness had hit – enveloping everything within a blanket of charcoal that gave off nothing but malicious intent, nothing like what he suffered every night. Living in a cupboard was all well and good, but it prepared him for absolutely nothing in the real world. Not like the streets at night-time, where not even the light-poles notched on every few meters either side of the curb were brave enough to shine.

But he'd been expecting a rather different welcoming than the one he'd received – one that didn't include knocking him out as soon as his feet had stretched over the cob-webbed threshold. He'd had no idea it had happened until he'd woken up, not three minutes ago, blind-folded and still clutching onto Jonathon's hand like it was the light in his dark. His safety line.

It wasn't – he wasn't. Jonathon had allowed whoever, or whatever was in the room to do all sorts of things to him, and that included handling him whilst he was unconscious and putting a cloth around his head. One of the things that was pressed into him from day dot at the Dursleys was that touching of any sort was bad - most especially uninvited touching; that meant there were no hugs, no handshakes, no brushes of the elbow or hand, and there was always to be a two arms length between him and his family. It had sunk into him like a rock through quicksand, and rules like that followed him wherever he went. And so, any trust that he had carefully extended to the doctor to protect him was tender, but it was well and truly close to breaking at such a deceitful act.

Doctor Cambry would have known what would happen when they hit the doors, or when he'd be revealed to whoever was behind them, and it should have been obvious to the man that he didn't like touching anyone he didn't know. So, why would he allow others, complete strangers, to do so? Or knock him out so soon after waking up from a traumatic experience, otherwise?

Harry may be a child, eight years old or not, but he was nowhere near naive enough to trust someone after they'd done something so heinous to him. He hadn't trusted the Dursleys for long, and for very good reason. So what had made him extend the very slim amount of trust in him to the doctor he hadn't known for very long at all?

What had made him trust the doctor?

 _Whatever it was, it's gone now,_ he reckoned fiercely, holding tight to the large slightly warm hand cradling his own, despite wanting to throw it away in a fit of righteous anger. _Doctor Cambry lied to me, just like everyone else did. He probably only wants to get close to his bosses, like Uncle Vernon does every so often with dinner and dessert – kiss a few toes and rub a few necks. Doesn't even care about me._

There was a slight shuffle of crisp paper, crackling so keenly that Harry almost jerked in place as if a gun had gone off. He was calmed somewhat, with no help from the doctor, when he realized that someone was only fiddling around with a paper file. “This Hearing is begun on the 19th of August, 1988 at six o'clock in the evening. The Accused, _Isabella De Contessa_ and anonymous Werewolf are currently unknown and considered a flight-risk, and are therefore _persona non grata_ with our Government until they are found and brought to us,” a gentle, lilting voice murmured, and the sound of quick and decisive sharp scribbling on rough paper sounded from the front of the room in many directions. “There were no witnesses to attest for the incident, barring the Muggle armed forces to provide evidence, and the Complainant themselves. Complainant is eight years old and suffering unknown affects from the attack on the 17 th of August, 1988.”

Heart racing uncomfortably fast in his chest, Harry rubbed his clammy palm on his trouser leg and shuffled closer to Jonathon's leg, stiff and uncomfortable with not being able to use his strongest sense. He was above this mindless fear – he shouldn't be so quick to judge so harshly, especially since he knew how it felt to be on the other end of the judgment. But it was so hard not to fear the unknown, particularly because he couldn't see them to know what to make of them – however, these people could be far better than Jonathon was and he just didn't know it.

They could be better than the Dursleys. Although, that didn't take much of an effort.

A throat being cleared brought him out of any thought trains he could get trapped in, although it sounded as if the person only wanted to break the loaded silence than actually clear their throat, and he straightened up almost unconsciously.

“I believe the child should have his blind-fold removed. Better to see his face than to guess at what lay behind the mask, true? Doctor Cambry, please remove the cloth,” he heard her instruct, and not a moment later felt relief blooming in his stomach as tentative fingers fumbled the soft fabric from around his head. “Thank you, that's much better,” the woman continued, sounding very pleased with herself and the current situation, despite it being so grim.

There were five people sitting behind a rather long mahogany desk, and though they were obviously there in tandem with one another, they couldn't be any more different. Harry marveled at such a sight, wondering not for the first time, how so many different people could stand together for more than five seconds when they're so obviously pitted against each other. They all seemed to be tipping their noses up in the general directions of their seated comrades, and despite them being fully grown adults who could take care of themselves, Harry couldn't help but think of a rainbow to compare their drastically different coloring.

At the far left, a mountainous man of epic proportions was sat in a tall backed leather chair, an olive face flushed with lively determination and fire and covered in coarse looking dark hair that spiraled wildly from the top of his head. His hair was a dark chocolate brown, but despite the wiliness of his caramel eyes, he was graying lightly at the temples and had a heavyset frown weighing down fairly sized lips. He was anything but impressed with what he saw before him – he looked rather bored, actually.

Beside that man sat a woman – the woman who'd spoken about him just before, he knew just by looking at her. She was fair in skin and hair, almost too pale in complexion, but her eyes sparkled a beautiful kind violet that complemented the delicate rosiness in her cheeks and succulent pouting lips. She was nothing short of a Goddess from one of his favorite mythical books from the school library, and she was dressed in similar clothing of pearly white satin that fell in delicate folds around her body, accentuating dips and curves Harry hadn't ever thought would be possible in human flesh. That she was very kind and seemed the most motherly of people he'd ever seen did nothing but raise her in his mind even further.

She appealed to him so much that Harry didn't want to stop looking at her, but the woman beside her practically beckoned his gaze turn to her, despite the heavy regret he felt in his heart at tearing his eyes away from the Goddess. Whoever the new woman was, she was stiffer than a wooden beam and rigid in her own winged seat, hair the darkest shade of black and eyes just as ashy, and she stared at him with her uncomfortably penetrative eyes – analyzing him from the ground up. She wasn't terribly catching for the eye, though that wasn't what deterred him from wanting to beg for a hug from her. It was the fact that a blade and a bloodthirsty grin wouldn't look amiss on her oval shaped face and long, reaching hands. She, too, was anything but impressed with what stood before her.

It gave him no trouble in looking to her right immediately, relaxing the amount he'd tensed from looking at the woman, and somewhat more at what he found. The woman beside the dark one was seemingly spun of pure gold, from the top of her head to - presumably - the very toenails on her feet. She seemed to shine with an unearthly grace and inner light that begged to be smiled at, despite the mistrusting mischievous glint in her otherwise gravely dim eyes, which were also a concentrated amber that seemed to reflect the dimly flickering flames on the chamber walls. Whatever the woman was, Harry reckoned Uncle Vernon would try to sell her at his work as a golden statue.

He'd probably make quite the profit from her, as well.

She gifted him with a polite smile at his inquisitive gaze and tilted her golden head in greeting, but fortuitously didn't catch him on his impolite staring and reprimand him as Aunt Petunia would have done.

Harry was all too glad of that. It was one thing to be scolded by a woman who  _wanted_  to be royalty, but it was something else entirely to be scolded by someone who actually  _was royalty_. It embarrassed him to even think of the situation that came to mind; Of the golden woman taking him by the hand and slapping his wrist for staring, and at a lady no less.

He traded her smile for a helplessly strained one, and turned to the person sitting on her right at the very end of the table. To complete the council was a man that exuded a dark aura of malcontent and frustration, like a certain sweet scent that Harry couldn't get out of his head and nose. It didn't take Harry long to realize just what the man was, it was actually rather obvious when he knew what to look for. He was what Harry would call frightfully tall, clothed in fine fabrics Aunt Petunia would kill for to give her 'Duddy Diddy-kins', and bedecked in numerous darkly glittering jewels that brought those shiny sweets Dudley liked to mind. He held a long narrow face that was both paler than the full moon and seemingly glowing just as much, and his slightly fuller pale lips concealed sharp white teeth within. 

He felt and looked almost exactly like Isabella had, despite their extreme difference in coloring and temperament. It was oddly strange and relieving to see a Vampire just sitting, albeit impatiently, and not squirming to eat him. Impatience aside, the man didn't exactly seem in the mood to bite him - rather just have him executed.

Harry shuddered at the mere thought of it; of knowing about all the mythical creatures in books being real and having been attacked by not just one, but two of them, and then just passing out of existence, out of thought and out of mind. Forgotten, like the unmemorable impressions he'd left behind at school. Of Dudley's constant bullying and belittlement of him as his dirty, pauper, orphan cousin, clothed in his leftovers and fed just that little enough to allay any suspicions as to what happened at home.

Forgotten by his family - unknown and known. 

“Little boy,” a light lilting voice called him to attention, and he was relieved to see that it was the Goddess who'd spoken not long ago. She gifted him with a glorious smile and beckoned him closer – out of the shadow of Jonathon the Liar and squarely before the strange five. He moved more than willingly, pulling his hand from Jonathon's grasping one a little forcefully, and was rewarded with another kind smile. “Allow me to be the first to welcome you to the _International Confederation for Immortally Inclined Beings_. A mouthful, I know, but it is what it is,” she said cheerfully, giving him a friendly wink. “Now, my name is Esmerla Viviana, and I am the current Leader of what is known as the Succubi. My colleagues will introduce themselves to you in due time, however, so as not to confuse you I'll just give them a quick point and say their name. Is that alright if I do so, Young man?”

Harry nodded slowly, warming ever so slightly to the Goddess who was trying so hard to make him relax. She seemed to relax as well, as if finding relief in his answer – as if he'd reject her immediately and sulk.

“To my right is Thorón, and he's the Leader of the Werewolves. But don't you worry about him, he's a sweetie,” she began smoothly, perking up a little more as if to soothe any sting from hearing that last word. She knew from the file that he'd been attacked by one. “To my left is Laméra, the Leader of the Unseelie Fae, and beside her is Elissan, the Leader of the Seelie Fae. If Laméra says something rude, just ignore it, it's the way of all Unseelie to say whatever's in their head at the time,” she told him, and if her smile turned a little brittle, it wasn't her fault.

“At the very end is Marius, Leader of the Vampires,” she stated rather quickly, and moved right along before Harry could dwell even more over the darkly sneering man. “Now, may I know what you are called, dear one?” she asked kindly.

Harry couldn't see any reason to deny her such a simple request. It was only his name, after all, not the address of his family. What was the danger? “My name is Harry Potter, ma'am,” he said very politely. He dithered between fear and confusion when she seemed to pale and merely stare at him as soon as the last syllable left his mouth.

“Harry Potter?” the man on the far right suddenly hissed, snapping forward in his seat so abruptly Harry almost thought he'd broken his spine. The man earned the sharp gazes of the four other beings, but he seemed naught to care – his fathomless eyes were attached to Harry so firmly it seemed impossible for him to look away. “You cannot be _Harry Potter_. He has been hidden for years in the Muggle world, lost to all whom still look for him and locked in an unplottable bolthole for safe-keeping until such a time as the danger passes. You are lying, Boy, and it is very  _off-putting_. Reveal your true name, or we might not be so kind as to ask the next time so as to simply force it from you.”

Harry frowned at the Vampire, doing his very best to remain as still and upright as possible, even if his spine felt as limp as a cooked noodle. “But my name is Harry Potter, Sir,” he insisted plaintively.

"Lies," the man spat, and Harry felt a coil of fear in his quivering belly tighten as the man seemed to become nothing more than an angry panther on the hunt, rising ever so slightly from his seat as if about to pounce at the next provocation. “You're doing yourself no favors, Boy. I advise you not to lie again, lest my teeth find themselves wandering in unwanted territory,” he said through gritted teeth.

Harry didn't know what to do, what to say to convince them. He wasn't lying!

“Marius, If I may interrupt, I can prove that the boy is indeed the brother of the Boy Who Lived,” Jonathon stepped in immediately, once more putting his hand on Harry protectively as if he could sense Harry's crushing anxiety. “There were files of a previous accident involving one Harry Potter in the Hospital's database, and the blood-work we had done then and today proved to be a match between both boys. This is Harry James Potter - standing right in front of you. He tells no lies.”

The Vampire, Marius, seemed to become amused at that, even as his claw-shaped fingers dug into the mahogany desk with low creaks. “Forgive me my ignorance, Doctor Cambry, but just how accurate is this Muggle science that you claim to be the be-all end-all of all logical argument?” he asked reasonably, though his thin upper lip creased up in a manner reminiscent of a sneer and he sounded just that bit condescending. “As I understand it, Muggle sciences are still in their fledgling years, barely comprehending the knowledge and mystery of the earth stretched out before them. If the boy here truly were Harry Potter, he would reek of magic and power – not the blank and emptiness of that of a Muggle boy. You have been gravely mistaken, Cambry. You put too much trust in the Muggle's childish logic, and it has led you astray - not for the first time, might I add to your _inconsiderable_  credit. Your ploy for favor has fallen flat, yet again. We will not be taken in by your threat of political ruin.”

_What the hell did that mean?_

“'Mistaken'?” Jonathon echoed hollowly, staring at Marius with incomprehension in his eyes. “I'm not attempting anything, Marius, this boy is Harry Potter. He may not feel like it right now, but he has power and magic deep down inside – he wouldn't be alive if he were just a plain old Muggle! He's been bitten by a Werewolf and bled by a Vampire, _simultaneously_. Not just anyone can walk away from that still breathing,” he explained hurriedly, looking to each of them beseechingly with sincere blue eyes.

His words seemed to break the man on the far left of the table out of his boredom, as he visually perked up in interest and stared at Harry with gleaming caramel eyes, as if studying a particularly interesting specimen. “Bitten by one of mine and still alive,” he mused thoughtfully, and Harry was surprised by the deep, growling voice that came from his mouth; It reminded him all too much of the wolf two nights ago. “The boy must have some level of innate magic to resist the corrosive nature of our venom to Muggles. If he didn't then he wouldn't have survived the change – much less been able to balance the blood of your kind and our venom mixed,  _Marius_. Let them speak,” he said to the Vampire in a somewhat oddly tense voice, just a tiny step down from aggressive.

“Coming to the rescue of yet another runt, as always, Thorón,” sneered the Vampire lowly.

The Werewolf's upper lip slipped upward in a fierce snarl, a sound too incredibly wolf-like to possibly come from a human. But then again, the mountainous man was more animal than man. 

Harry dared to wonder if that was the reason why the Werewolf and the Vampire were at the farthest seats from each other, like a set of deadly book-ends on a shelf. Hate seemed to be crackling between them like a living entity, tempered only by the three women separating them. Their hate was strong – even more so than Aunt Petunia hated Mrs Number Nine. Even if Harry couldn't see his aunt attacking another woman for having better dishes than she does. It was a bit unnerving to watch the two, rather like waiting for the teeth and claws to come out when something was taken too far or one of them took a step out of turn.

It was rather like trusting Dudley with a loaded gun and telling him not to fire it. Obviously something untoward was going to happen sooner or later, regardless of any preventative measures – and it would be his fault.

Everything always was.

“I fail to see how Cambry came to the conclusion that the boy is Harry Potter, merely because he survived a highly unlikely circumstance,” Marius finally said, rather tersely in reply, which was little more than a snake's warning hiss. His shadowed eyes were staring daggers at Harry, as if sensing his mounting unease and wanting to triple it. It was working. “Boy, what scars have you on your person?” he sniped.

“I have a scar on my head,” Harry answered hesitantly, lifting a timid hand to sweep back the overgrown fringe flopped on his forehead to reveal the lightning bolt scar, resting hidden above his left eyebrow. Marius's eyes seemed to immediately narrow in on the pale flesh, an inferno of unknown emotion churning in those terrible eyes as terrible possibilities seemed to dawn on him. “Aunt Petunia said I cut my head as a baby, since I'm so clumsy, but I don't remember what I did to get it,” he explained, unprompted and most likely unnecessary.

And he was right. The five seemed more focused on his forehead than on him, even when he was talking to them about it. He pondered, not for the first time since beginning the trial, at what was just so important about a healed superficial wound. How could a scar prove his name was actually his? How would they know? Even Jonathon had seemed surprised to find that he'd been helping 'Harry Potter', and not some nameless child. Was his scar - the one on his forehead, anyway, a bad one?

The Goddess Esmerla had paled even further upon catching sight of his scar, surprisingly, but it was the cool and calm gaze of the Golden lady that caught his attention the most - the only movement she'd made since the very beginning of the trial; a slight tilt of her head and a calculating glint in her beautiful eyes. 

“He is Harry Potter,” said the dark-haired woman, in a surprisingly soft and husky voice, a smile that could cut steel gracing her colorless lips as she continued examining him with flat black eyes. “The brother of the Boy Who Lived has been turned by a Vampire and bitten by a Werewolf, two of the most dangerous animals out there. This should prove to be most amusing when the public learns of his affliction. Whatever will they do?” she sneered mockingly.

“Laméra,” said Esermla tersely, to the dark woman's obvious distaste. “This is no game. This poor child has been attacked and maimed – turned against his own will into a Vampire Child, or perhaps into something even worse. You know the consequences of this - what will happen.”

 _Death,_ Harry's mind supplied so very unhelpfully, and he stifled the urge to curl up into ball on the floor when the thought was echoed on the faces of all five beings. Although he couldn't see his face, Jonathon's hand tightened on his shoulder, but he couldn't distinguish if it was supportive or sympathetic. It certainly felt like dread to him.

It wasn't exactly comforting when even his escort didn't have much faith in his survival rate.

"Don't trouble your empty little head about it, Esmerla," said the dark woman, Laméra, in a low, drawling voice. "I'm not the one condemning the brother of the Boy Who Lived to death, merely because he was attacked and turned by one of Marius's and Thorón's. I was merely making an observation."

Esmerla seemed to grumble to herself and slump in her seat, becoming uncharacteristically glum and annoyed for a person as kind and patient as she seemed to be. Harry didn't known any of them nearly well enough to know what was habit from personality, but it still stung to know that actors like she apparently was didn't just belong in workplaces like  _Grunnings_ _._  That even though they portrayed perfection, they were the farthest from it.

Laméra didn't look at the grimly pouting woman beside her, but Harry could see her grinning with amusement from inside the comfort of her inky shadow.

“Perhaps,” began the Golden woman in a hushed murmur, and it was obvious by the sudden deafening silence on the others behalf that her input was taken very seriously, even by Laméra. If Harry looked up at Jonathon, he'd bet his only pair of shoes that the man would be itching to take out his clipboard and take down notes. “Taking into consideration the unique circumstances of his current state before us, death is not the solution to the problem as it once was. Harry Potter's heart still beats within his chest, he is not dead and unfeeling, or rash in his decisions like the others whom have been lost to time and history.

“He will be a figurehead for the coming war – if not an absolute resource,” she continued quietly, amber eyes intense and focused, yet distanced with thought. She sounded as if she were talking to herself, rather than to her audience. “If we were to destroy him now, the wizards would know when the time came to collect him, and a war would begin on all creatures for supposed justice for murdering the brother of the world's darling. It wouldn't be a politically wise decision to provoke an unneeded attack on innocent beings. Not wise, at all.”

There was a pregnant pause, bloated with tension and confusion that seemed to drag down the ever failing trial. And then the Werewolf gave a small huff of a growl and leaned forward in his seat to stare at her. “And just what are you suggesting we do about him?” he asked impatiently, a mighty scowl on his masculine face. 

The woman smiled mysteriously. “I propose a trial basis,” she said plainly. “Whereupon Mr Potter will be observed for three months in a controlled environment. By the third month, he shall have visited his third full moon and thus, securing his third turning as a Werewolf. If he becomes a Werewolf, there is still the chance that he will become a Vampire, or perhaps even more. Only then can we trust that he will endure under our restrictions.”

“What makes you say that _he_  will be one of mine?” growled the Werewolf, suspicion growing by the handful on his roguish features. “Just because he's still breathing doesn't mean he's strong enough to be a wolf. He's already been infected by the leeches – that doesn't leave room for us.”

“Thorón is correct, Elissan,” Jonathon added softly, unintentionally bearing his stress down on poor Harry's shoulder when the five turned to pierce him with unyielding stares. Thorón himself looked about ready to hit something – that something being Jonathon's face, even if he tipped his head in a tense nod of agreement. “Werewolves and Vampires are destructive when introduced to each other, even at a base cellular level. Venom and blood mixed together would be worse than the most powerful acid in the world – it's a purely toxic cocktail that that would kill anything it infected. It's honestly something of a miracle that Harry's even breathing right now, let alone having a fully functioning brain with next to perfect recall and personality.”

"Debatable," snorted Marius meanly. "He'd be lucky to be a Squib."

“Mr Potter isn't as powerless as most presume, despite his age and powerless aura,” Elissan countered levelly. “He has survived much worse than the destructiveness of Wolf and Vampiric venom. I can only assume the reasons as to why the Potters hid him in the Muggle world, but being a Squib is not one of them. I'm certain that his magic, as inconspicuous as it is, has created something beautiful – a union, of sorts,” she said, thinly veiled amusement and friendly trickery playing in her voice.

"A union?" Thorón snapped at her suspiciously, bearing his sparkling white teeth in barely disguised threat as she merely smiled tranquilly at him. “What bloody union would this be, now?”

Elissan smiled at each of them mysteriously - even Harry, whom stared up at her with a tiny puzzled frown on his face. 

“Oh, don't tease them with your terrible suspense treatment, 'San. They're positively dying to know. Shall you tell them, or shall I?” said Laméra lowly with an amused grin. She rolled her dark eyes around the room and seemed to soak up the probing attention the five beings were shoving her way, when Elissan refused to answer her - let alone look at her. "What Miss Prim is trying to say, is that Potter performed the impossible, as his brother is known to have done as a babe. He united the Vampiric and Lycanthropic venoms in one single moment, his immature magic acting as a sealant to prevent any untoward reactions from occurring within him,” she intoned lazily.

“Binding symptoms with nature on all breeds, and compromising a common ground in all aspects of wizard, Vampire and Werewolf,” Elissan added testily, when the woman pointedly didn't continue, uncommonly tetchy and annoyed as if she were reluctant to continue on where Laméra left off. "By my guesstimate, the magic within him was held in a reserve deep down, and when he was attacked all of it was used to protect him; to keep his heart beating and to fight off any negative reactions from the poisonous cocktail of venom and blood. This is why we cannot feel any of his magic, and why he is still so weak and without the senses that come with being a Vampire and Werewolf. He is still adjusting and his body deciding on what characteristics it will take on, ergo, my proposal of a three month trial."

“That's why he still has a heartbeat,” Jonathon suddenly breathed in wonder, as if finally solving an impossible puzzle. “Vampire hearts barely have fifteen beats per minute when low on blood, and a Werewolf's heart is over-active at 120 beats per minute in normalcy – Harry's magic is compromising with all states, two parts moderate and accelerated heartbeat and one lagging. It's why his still sounds somewhat  _normal_ despite being what he is. What he will be.”

Thorón's impressively broad chest rumbled as a growl slowly built up in his throat, nothing sounding too pleasing. “A Hybrid?” he said through gritted teeth, said teeth bared as all Vampires and Werewolves seemed to do when angered or upset. “Since when have we been allowing lines to mix – it's _inconceivable!_ ” he thundered, very nearly tearing the stones from the walls by voice alone. “If it were meant to be, our kind would have blended together many centuries ago. Why would -”

"It may not have happened in the past, but it's happening now," said Laméra in a drawling voice. "Fate often works in mysterious ways. Or haven't you heard, _mongrel_?" she asked him, all steel smiles and no kindness in sight.

Thorón's growl could have made thunder tremble and fade out, it was almost like he was visibly vibrating in his seat in fury. "I am not going to be responsible for a Hybrid," he snarled out dangerously, spittle flying from his remarkably long and dangerous canine teeth. "The leeches can take him, it's their fault we're even in this mess -"

"It's a shared responsibility!" Marius suddenly snapped out, leaning forward around Elissan to bare long fangs at the enraged Werewolf. "Your filthy mutt was involved in this just as much as Isabella was! And just where is it? Cowering under it's bed like the little flea-bitten -"

"At least my wolves have control!" Thorón thundered back.

“Oh, _pl_ _ease_ ,” sneered Marius in reply, the very epitome of disgust and anger dripping from his velvety voice. “If what your dogs have is control, then control must be very poor indeed! You must certainly be very proud if they go about biting children of a night!”

Harry took the wobbling step closer to the table it took for the five beings to notice him once more, as incensed as the Vampire and Werewolf were. It wasn't exactly pleasant to be under such vicious gazes, but it at least firmed Harry's resolve to salvage what was left of an already remarkably irrecoverable situation. “Please don't fight,” he pleaded softly. “I know I don't get a say, but Miss Elissan said something I'm interested in. Can we please talk about it calmly?”

Deafening silence reigned in the chamber, the gentle flickering of the flames hovering on the walls dominating any sound in the rather large space. It cast the astonished faces of the five beings into stark relief – most especially the, if a bit insulted, Vampire that was slowly losing steam at the far end of the table.

“How remarkable,” said Laméra, her dark eyes staring down at Harry as if fascinated by him. “An eight year old child has more sense than the supposed leaders of two important factions. My, my, don't you two feel special?” she asked Thorón and Marius teasingly.

“It seems we've fallen off track,” said Esmerla then, chagrined by the lightly chastising look Elissan was sending her from around the Unseelie, cheeks flushed a delicate red, most likely at having a child correct the situation, but her eyes bright with gratitude as she looked at him. “I believe we should get back to the matter at hand; his future. What are the viable options for Mr Potter?”

“Killing him would create strife,” said Elissan wisely, almost immediately after Esmerla stopped speaking. “Political and other. We can't risk that so soon after the Dark Lord, let alone to make a political movement so large as to include the Potters. Death would be inescapable for many – they'd call for our heads, for obvious reasons. He will not be killed.”

Harry's heart stopped, however, his hope deprived lungs kept pumping to breathe in the relief he was aching to feel. Minutes ticked by and not one word was said to dispute Elissan, even though he could see that Marius so desperately wanted to disagree and put in his two pounds.

“Agreed,” Esmerla stated instantly when an invisible time limit had been exceeded, tapping the long, manicured nails of her left hand down on the table as if they were a gavel. The sound echoed in the chamber, and Harry rather thought that maybe they were the judge's gavel in this instance. Or at least a deciding one.

“If we let him walk freely then others would think they could turn children and get away with it,” said Marius dismally. “We can't allow that to happen. No one needs that disaster again. I propose lifetime imprisonment, away from any and all those whom still look for him until such a time as he's rightly needed – _if ever_. 3 month trial notwithstanding that period, and is instead entrusted to our most loyal Healers to experiment and study him for any effects he has from both venoms. To prevent any future occurrences, or to begin a new powerful race.”

Esmerla's hand seemed to hesitate for a moment, before it tapped the table again and the sound echoed around them. “Pending judgment,” she stated reluctantly, and cleared her throat as if she were about to be overcome by unwanted emotion. The look she sent Harry was almost enough to make him want to wet himself; she was genuinely afraid for him.

“The public wouldn't assume that right if we pass another law forbidding the turning of children,” said Thorón gruffly, tilting his head ever so slightly in Marius's direction. “I say we update the system and look for any loopholes we might've initially missed. I propose Potter will be watched and studied for 3 months and his fate decided upon the conclusion of that time; imprisonment or 'accidental death'.”

“Pending judgment,” stated Esmerla quietly, tapping her hand again.

“New rules or no, he cannot roam freely. He must be watched and studied at all times,” said Laméra, most likely the only time she'd said something so seriously and without jest. “I agree with Elissan's earlier proposal of 3 months trial. This situation is unprecedented, and this is too perfect of an opportunity to to have a candidate others aren't willing to murder. Those mainly being the wizards themselves.”

“I agree,” Esmerla added brightly. “All those in favor of Elissan's proposal of a supervised 3 month trial, please raise your hand.”

Laméra lifted her right hand lazily, followed quickly by Esmerla and Elissan herself, both of whom gazed at Harry comfortingly and intently. Relief was rolling in thick and heavy now, almost enough to make tears form in Harry's emerald eyes, but he was standing strong and tall. He had to be grown up now, he couldn't afford to step a toe out of line or else he'd be stuck in some cell somewhere – like Marius had wanted.

He hadn't been so afraid in his life than in the last three days – death had been certain not just once, but more than he'd ever thought was possible in such a limited time. And he probably wouldn't even get to see his family again – safety wasn't assured now, things he hadn't ever thought real were out to get him, and he had to be a big boy and deal with it like Uncle Vernon and his business friends.

Luck wouldn't be with him forever.

Really, his safety was only secured by majority rule, and it could have gotten so much worse. If Elissan hadn't like him, or she hadn't been present, he could've died. It would have been a surety that he'd be dead by the end of the trial, if not for that woman. And who knows what would have happened to Jonathon then.

“Where will the boy go?” Thorón grunted out, between muttering something under his breath that seemed to annoy the three women. “He can't go back to the Muggles. He'll expose us for sure.”

“I do believe that Doctor Cambry lives with a cousin closer in to Muggle London,” drawled Laméra, a long, slow smile straining at her thin lips. “A rather renowned Vampire by the name of Tatiana. As reward for bringing this issue before us, I say that Mr Potter accompany Cambry to their shared abode and give him lodging until the trial is up.”

Harry heard the man beside him suck in a deep breath in shock. “A child has no place being there,” he heard Jonathon say tensely. “It's a hive of –  _adult_  activity. It's illegal.”

Laméra continued to smile and tilted her head, and Harry couldn't help but feel disturbed by the sight she made. “And? It's not illegal if you've been given permission this one time by the government,” she drawled humorously. “The boy has to grow up sometime, we may as well give him the advantage of knowing what to expect. He'll be learning a lot about the anatomy, anyway. One can't just leave bite marks anywhere.”

“Tatiana won't approve of this. Please, I beg of you to reconsider,” Jonathon said beseechingly. “She's got a business to run and she doesn't need bad publicity. Especially when they all find out she's hosting to a Hybrid – he'll scare them away.”

“I think she'll agree that it's best for Potter to live with you when you tell her this situation is dire,” Marius sneered, looking down his nose at the both of them as if disgusted. However, it was belied by the dark delight that seemed to glimmer in his dark eyes. “That, and the news that she will have someone in need of training. I heard that it is notoriously hard to hire servants in her line of business. Pride often gets in the way of good servers, and who better to attract business with fame than the great Harry James Potter himself? Potter will learn the ropes of our world with guidance he wouldn't receive otherwise, and he will do it under your care, with the help of Tatiana's hungry patrons or no. What better way to train a fledgling than to work in a blood-house filled with the best of the best?”

"You want him to understudy _Tatiana_?" Jonathon asked incredulously.

"He will work for his keep," Marius corrected him curtly. "The rest will all fall into place. If I'm not mistaken, this will give you an appropriate amount of time to work at the Muggle Hospital, which I know for a fact was becoming quite the hot-spot for a good drink. Do you dare deny the boy a proper education in his new heritage?"

Jonathon remained timidly silent, though Harry could feel the nervousness eking from the man in waves, attacking him from behind. It made the hair on the back of his neck and arms stand on end, insecurity spiking uncomfortably high in his belly even as relief ran rampant through him. 

Although he barely trusted the man, he was grateful to be going home with him. A doctor was better than a gossiping house-wife and an unimportant desk-worker. Not to mention the attachment of a stupid bullying cousin that chased him everywhere, hitting and kicking him at school, despite the rules of 'no-hitting' and such that the teachers always pressed upon them. 

“I believe this trial is concluded for the time being, until Isabella and the wolf responsible are found and brought before us to deliberate their sentence,” Marius continued to say, albeit slightly grimly. “To conclude this Hearing, Harry James Potter will serve a period of 3 months under the supervision and care of Tatiana and Jonathon Cambry. He will serve the patrons of  _Delirium_  until that time is up and will learn the rules of our society in the duration. You both may be called upon at any time shall the culprits be found and brought in, and at the end of the 3 months to share the results of said period. All those in favor, say 'aye'.”

A despondent, serious chorus of 'Aye' sounded at that, and before Harry even knew it, they had all disappeared from sight and from the chamber – all barring Esmerla. She was standing in front of him in the time it took for him to blink, gazing down at him with those lovely eyes and a beautiful smile curving her lips. It took his breath away with how much he longed to hug her, how she emanated the very thing he'd missed in his life and had always wanted. It also dredged up the loneliness that plagued him, spotlighted the dark pit waiting ever so patiently inside to swallow him whole. Bitterness washed at the relief and happiness like acid.

It seemed she noticed his pain, for she gazed at him compassionately and carefully smoothed a gentle hand over his fear-flushed cheek. “Harry,” she began softly. “I'm ever so sorry to hear of your accident, however, you must not dwell on the bad in this situation, but look for the good. If you hadn't been doing what you'd done that night, you might never have had the opportunity to meet me. I find myself being drawn to you for unknown reasons, though rest assured all of them are good. I shall visit you at the Cambry's in due time, however, I promise that I'll do my best to track down your attackers in the meantime. I will not rest until they are brought to justice.”

“You don't have to, ma'am,” he replied quietly, peering up at her from underneath his many lashes shyly, despite wanting to throw his arms around her and cry like a little baby. He ducked his head even further to the floor when the urge surged within him and stared down at his feet when she caught him staring at her longingly.

Her laugh was like that of wind-chimes, pure and genuine enough to soak pleasantly into his mind - not the slightest bit mocking. “I wish to, dearest,” she reassured him kindly. “Please, if you ever have need of me, I'm just a Floo call away. You have my absolute support – never forget that.”

“Th- thank you, I won't,” Harry promised breathlessly.

Her eyes then turned to Jonathon, and when Harry could bear to lift his gaze from the floor he saw that they had hardened ever so slightly. “Take care of him, Cambry,” she said, and her voice was no longer soft and motherly, but hard and steely. “If something untoward happens to him in that place, you're the first person I'm going to come after. Make no mistake, we Succubi are not violent by nature, but we are not the gentle creatures we're known to be when crossed. Don't test us. Don't test me.”

“I won't,” Jonathon replied quietly, distantly. “I'll do my best to keep him safe, and so will Tatiana.”

“You better,” Esmerla said, and seemed to glare at him one more time, before nodding her head in satisfaction and stepping away from them reluctantly in the direction of the large double doors they had apparently entered at the beginning of the trial. Not that Harry would know, he'd been unconscious and blind-folded at the time. “I have other duties needing my attention at present. I believe you can show yourselves out?”

“Yes,” Jonathon answered dutifully. “Thank you for your time, Esmerla.”

“Yes, thank you, Miss Esmerla!” Harry hurried to say, mustering up as much energy as possible to grin at the woman who'd helped him acclimate to his future so much. “It was a pleasure to meet you!” he enthused.

“And you, Mr Potter. Congratulations on the success of your Hearing,” she said kindly, looking back at him over her elegantly sloping shoulder one last time as she opened the doors and made to leave. “Enjoy the rest of your day, gentlemen,” she called back, and allowed them one last look of her radiant smile, before she too was gone from their sight and they were plunged into an anxious silence.

Jonathon was the first to break the silence - exhaling deeply and loudly, a sound of relief and dread all at the same time escaping him. “That couldn't have gone any better, not even if Marius or Thorón hadn't been present,” he muttered to himself fervently. “I should definitely be relieved that you're still alive.”

“And aren't you?” Harry asked him hesitantly, a bit insecurely.

Jonathon glanced down at him with a blank face, before allowing a thin smile to pull at his eyes. “I am,” he replied reassuringly. “But I guess I can't help but feel.. cheated out of my free time.”

“What are you gonna do? Suck the life out of every patient you have?” Harry asked him wryly, and grinned when the man gave him a pointedly blank look. “Oh, come on, Jonathon! I'm alive! I'm still here! Can't we be happy about that?”

“Well, you might not be alive when we get home,” Jonathon grumbled, and gratefully took the hand that Harry held out in invitation to lead them out of the chamber. “Tatiana can be a bit of a handful sometimes. And she - well, she hates children. Thinks they're useless, whinging little brats that waste precious air. And you just so happen to be a child.”

Harry blinked. “Oh,” he muttered despondently. “Well, she sounds.. nice. I can't wait to meet her.”

Jonathon glanced at him, one eyebrow raised flatly. "My cousin just so happens to hate sarcasm," he informed him bluntly. "Be as quiet and polite as possible without seeming like a pretentious twat and you'll be fine. An order from the Council isn't defied for just any reason, except perhaps suicide. I just hope she has enough sense in her head to realize that going against them isn't in her best interests. She can be a bit stubborn, sometimes," he explained needlessly.

"Oh," Harry said, and if his voice sounded a little lackluster, he wasn't reprimanded for it. 

"Yes, so please pay attention when she speaks to you, she hates repeating herself. And don't act weak around her, she'll pick you to pieces for every little thing you do..."

 _Bloody Dudley,_ Harry thought darkly.  _If I ever see you again you'll want to run faster than Ben Johnson..._


	9. Rolling in the Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning:  
> There's mild child abuse in the old memories that crop up from Privet Drive, so I warn you that it might be a bit.. eh. There's also some mentions of strippers and other things from the generic gentleman's club, although there's a bit of a twist. Obviously.
> 
> Please let me know if there's anything out of place or wrong, or if it drags on unnecessarily. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!

** Rolling in the Dark **

**_** Friday, 19th of August, 1988. ** _ **  
**_Delirium_ , Muggle London, Unknown Location.**

Somehow, Harry could hear music. The car was silent aside from the minute noises attributed to car travel and was travelling a slow, comfortable speed that lulled him into a quiet doze. The music teased at his ears quietly at first, a string of deep thrumming beats that touched very gently at his throat, and was becoming steadily louder and clearer the further they drove. It had been well into darkness by the time they'd left the Hearing, but it was well and truly pitch black outside by now – globules of blurred light-poles drifting by every few seconds or so.

His new hearing wasn't as powerful as Jonathon had mentioned it would be in passing, but neither was it so dull that he couldn't hear the quiet murmuring of people in their homes – the sound of a dramatic soap on television whenever they passed a lively house.

 _When you're falling to the ground... and you're too scared to look down, and Friday nights are getting cold,_ a gentle voice breathed, like a tiny songstress reclining on his shoulder and speaking to his heart. It was lovely. _When you're falling to your knees and your prayers are only pleas, and Friday nights are getting.. cold._

"Where's that music coming from?" he decided to finally ask, when the music became even louder and the feeling of extraordinary sadness was tugging at him more and more. If he could picture in his mind what had made the woman sing so sadly, he would see her being pulled down under water by firm hands, like she was hanging in the drift and staring up at the surface of the world in a plea to be released from whatever was holding her. She held no hope – but no fear, as well.

Just an overwhelming sadness that reeked of pain.

_Isn't it almost like a dream? Isn't it almost like a dream? Isn't it almost like a dream.. you're living..._

"It's coming from __Delirium,"__ Jonathon answered quietly, staring ahead with pensive blue eyes that flashed an odd bright white whenever the headlights of another car passed by. When Harry didn't reply, he sighed lightly and deftly continued, "It's one of the more popular bars in our society, due to the fact that it caters to a lot of other beings than just Vampires and Werewolves, or one or the other. Everyone goes there for a dance, drink, __special activity__ , or just for socializing with others of their kind. In this day and age, solace with like-minded people isn't as commonplace as it was years ago, so we must make do with hiding from the world."

Harry didn't know how to feel about that. Vampires and Werewolves seemed bad enough just on their own, and to have them be egged on by loads of other creatures whom all probably had the ability to tear his arms off with their teeth and beat him with them? It didn't really sit well in his chest. With monumental effort, he shoved those highly stressful thoughts aside and forced himself to calm.

When he was sure he wouldn't simultaneously combust, burst into tears or scream bloody murder, he glanced at Jonathon askance. “But, Jonathon, I heard the music from way back there. How could I hear it then when we haven't gotten there yet?” he questioned.

He flushed a dull red when Jonathon merely glanced down at him with a cocked eyebrow, lips pursed and looking decidedly unimpressed. “You're transitioning into a Vampire or a Werewolf, Harry,” he stated blandly. “Things that normally wouldn't happen to you before are bound to happen now - stranger things than the norm for us beings, even. Especially because we Vampires mixed with the Lycans are a particularly volatile mixture that can only result in death, and this type of thing is entirely unprecedented; Meaning, it's never happened before and we don't know what to expect from this. From you.

"You're going to be experiencing a whole lot more than just your hearing becoming exponentially stronger. To name a few off the top of my beautiful head; An insane hunger that will never go away no matter what you eat, spectacular eyesight and hearing, and strange growth spurts everywhere. Age won't affect you like it has before, not like it will the humans. Or so I assume,” he murmured thoughtfully. "As I said before, this hasn't ever happened until you came along, so we're as deeply entrenched in the dark as you are."

Harry's heart ground to a stuttering halt in his chest, and the old ache in his chest that hadn't quite gone away just yet, flared into life with a vengeance. “I'm never getting older?!” he shrieked tearfully.

"Did I say that you wouldn't?" Jonathon asked tightly in response, fingers tightening on the steering wheel in annoyance, and Harry couldn't help but feel slightly reprimanded. " _No_. I said that no matter what age you will be, growth and changes in your body won't tarry to statistics any longer. Whatever you've learned in that Muggle school about Health and changes in the human body, won't happen according to their studies for you. The born Vampires grow and mature a lot faster than humans, much like Werewolves. But since you were bitten and turned by both a born Vampire and a rampaging Werewolf, things are bound to be different for you. You're currently two parts aging and growing to one part frozen."

"What does that mean?"

Jonathon seemed to growl under his breath, his jaw clenching tight and his eyebrows furrowing over dark eyes. "It means that you have more of a chance to grow into an adult than to be stuck as an eight year old child forever," he explained gruffly. "This could mean that you will grow with time to an acceptable age, and freeze at that age when magic has deemed you grown."

Harry relaxed into his seat once more and let his head loll on his shoulders, a sigh of relief escaping him despite the irritation eking out from the man beside him. "I'm sorry, Jonathon. I thought you meant I wouldn't ever grow up," he admitted sheepishly, cheeks flaming a hot red. "So I could be taller than what I am now?"

"Possibly," Jonathon grunted, and without further speech abruptly turned the car down a narrow lane that plunged them into an unnatural darkness. Not even the car's headlights could make much of a dent in the blackness swallowing them, and there were no other cars to light their way should they pass by.

There weren't any light-poles to lead them down here, but from a decent distance Harry could see a sign in luminescent amber hanging from a post above a leather-clad crowd, all clamoring for entrance to the building that seemed to be visibly vibrating with music from before. It was dark, it was chilly even with the slight heat radiating from the car, and the street seemed suddenly crowded. He couldn't differentiate the people wearing black from the shadows, and he figured this was the reason why Jonathon wasn't speeding as he had been a lot earlier.

Even with his superior eyesight, there was no sense to be had in barreling down a street so obviously clogged with creatures of all habits and tempers. One wrong turn and there could be a fight of epic proportions on their hands.

Harry craned his neck to read the sign hanging above the doorway, interested in that the most despite the peculiarly and most curiously dressed people standing below it. There was even a _shirtless woman!_  He looked away from her very quickly, and instead let his eyes fall on the sign.

 _ _Delirium,__ the post read in a sharply looped script. _Proudly c _atering to the Bloodthirsty and Carnivorous since 1509.__

His eyes were quickly torn away from the crowd rather unwillingly when Jonathon turned once more, and led the car down an unfathomably deep alleyway blocked by two imposing walls on either side, cluttered with empty crates and dirty bottles that clinked and rolled from the disturbance in the air that the car made. The lights flickered off, immediately plunging them into a darkness so thick it looked almost like a blanket, and a quiet settled among them. The song from before, however, was still playing in the building, and Harry ignored the quiet rustling of Jonathon busying himself in the driver seat in favor of the beautiful rhythm.

 _I will, borrow the rest of your life,_ she crooned lovingly. __I will, borrow the rest of your life if you let me. Isn't it almost like a dream? Isn't it almost like a dream? Isn't it almost like a dream.. you're living...__

"I really like this song," he breathed, utterly transfixed by the melody and bobbing his head with the gentle whispering of the guitar strings. "What is it?" he asked.

He heard Jonathon grunt and groan from inside the tangle of fabric he'd made by wrestling with his expensive clothes. "I see we've got another bloody fan of it. I believe it's called _Friday Nights_ ," he muttered dourly. "Tatiana loves the song, and she plays it often enough to have people unwillingly loving it, too, so you're in luck. Two peas in a pod, you two will be."

__I will borrow the rest of your life, if you let me. Isn't it almost like a dream? Isn't it almost like a dream? Isn't it almost like a dream.. you're living...__

Harry felt a smile tug at his lips, and he ducked his head as the song sadly began to fade away, little beeping sounds punctuating the end of it like a deadening heartbeat. "I wonder what she'll think of me?" Harry whispered, not entirely to himself, tucking his knees up to his chest and cuddling into them worriedly, not minding his bony, knobbly knees for the moment. 

"She will like you, Harry," Jonathon murmured, serious but not unkindly. Harry looked at him uncertainly, not a small amount of insecurity showing on his face, and for good reason. His time at the Dursley's hadn't brought him up to be excessively confident in himself and his surroundings, nothing had ever been permanent for him, as evident by his real family dumping him at his relatives.

Jonathon's lips spread in a wide grin, such an uncharacteristic thing that it stunned him for a moment to see. "You seem as nutty as a fruitcake to me, Potter. Anyone willing to walk around the slums of this place in the dead of night is deserving of her admiration. Not even she would do that, and for very good reason, obviously."

_Yeah, because century old Vampires are afraid of getting glass in their shoes._

"But you said she hates kids..." Harry trailed off uncomfortably.

"Well, yes, because they're bad for business. But you're hardly a child," Jonathon pointed out reasonably, watching the myriad of anxious emotions flitting across Harry's face with curiously intent blue eyes. "You've had such a hard life that you've grown up long before your time, so much that you'll find the moment you walk in that you're the most mature out of all the staff we have. Any other child in your position would have died the moment they stepped out of their streets, let alone survived a night in one of the worst parts of London. You are no child, Harry. If you don't believe me, ask the Council. They recognized your intelligence and maturity when they decided your fate, and they believed that you would be able to handle your condition. Not just any child can do that – magic or no. Do you understand me?"

Harry inhaled deeply through his nose, as if to suck in the energy to keep the tears at bay. He hadn't cried just yet, and he didn't want to – he hated the tears, ever since the first night he'd spent in his cupboard. They were useless, and made you feel worse than you had gathering them. "Yes, Jonathon," he answered quietly. "I understand."

"Good," Jonathon murmured, tipping his head in a courteous nod. Harry noticed, perhaps for the first time since they parked here, that the man's eyes were ringed and shadowed expertly in black charcoal, and his hair was perfectly coiffed in tousled waves that stuck up in odd flicks at the ends. "Now that I've assuaged you for the moment, I'll thank you to let me finish preparing myself. Presentation and reputation are key in our society, and you would do well to remember that in future. Especially in _Delirium_. You'll need to learn all about this if you want to keep a steady job here."

Harry grimaced, but dutifully nodded his head, tears thankfully forgotten for the moment. But he'd bet his left ear that they'd be back later. "I don't have to wear that, do I?" he asked grimly, pointing gingerly at the tiny black pencil laying in the cup holder, blunt with use. "My aunt says that stuffs for girls. She'll have a cow if she knows I've worn it!"

Jonathon huffed a quiet chuckle, even as he pulled a folded square of black fabric from a compartment and shrugged off his professional looking jacket and the crisp white dress shirt underneath. Harry averted his eyes politely and waited until the man had finally slid the shirt over his head and positioned it correctly. It was awkward, sitting beside someone who wasn't dressed, but Harry had done worse things.

After a long moment, Harry heard him laugh again, and twitched as gentle fingertips brushed at the hair on his temple. "I'm fully clothed now, you can turn around," he heard the man say, and Harry gratefully turned to face him once more. "Alright, now that I'm not naked anymore," the man teased with a charming smirk that embarrassed Harry to even see. "I'm a little curious about something you said just before. How would your aunt even know that you've worn cosmetics? You're hardly going to walk up to her and tell her that, are you?"

Harry shook his head immediately. 

"So, what's the problem with wearing a little bit of eyeliner?" Jonathon questioned bemusedly, raising a sharp eyebrow. "It's not like it's going to hurt you, or stain your eyes like some of the women around town seem to think. In fact, I'm an expert at applying the stuff. No eye-gouging, I promise."

Harry felt like a colossal idiot, because he was making such a fuss over something so small in comparison to what's happened the last few days, but there was the idea of wearing girl's stuff in his head that just staunchly refused to allow him to even touch it. Aunt Petunia had been extreme about the rules he had to abide by, as had Uncle Vernon, especially when they saw him putting away Aunt Petunia's clothes in the wardrobe and had presumably spotted him eyeing off a dress, as if he would actually try and wear it. 

That lesson refused to leave him, and for all the wrong reasons. The resulting punishment in particular had been spectacularly horrible, even for Dudley to watch, as the pig had always done when Harry was in for a good beating. He'd been black and blue for weeks, his buttocks too sore to sit on and his stomach too tense to ingest anything from anxiety. 

Sadness and depression had been by his side for the duration of that horrible time, never leaving him for a moment, and they'd truly become his bed-buddies ever since then.

_It's abnormal._

"I can't wear it," Harry mumbled, shaking his head weakly at the offered eyeliner pencil. "I'm not supposed to."

"Harry, men and women have been wearing cosmetics such as this for centuries, long before you or I," Jonathon said, lowering his hand and the proffered eyeliner pencil to his lap. "I can understand your reluctance not to, believe me, I myself had been forced to wear it the first time I had been changed. I hadn't liked it then, even though I like the way it looks on me now, but it's practically part of the uniform here. Although, perhaps we can try it sometime later then if you feel too discomforted by it now, yeah?"

Harry nodded without looking up at him. He didn't want to see the disappointment on the doctor's face, if even for a split second. Not when he'd done so much for him in a short period of time. "I'm sorry, Jonathon," he said quietly.

"Think nothing of it," Jonathon uttered graciously, glancing at himself in the mirrors even as he was packing the pencil out of the way and shoving the used shirt and jacket into the backseat. He licked his fingers and swiped them over his eyebrows, as if that would keep them in place, and gave himself a cheeky wink in the visor mirror. "Alright, I think it's time for you to meet your new employer and roommate. No use sitting out here any longer, aye? All that'll accomplish us is to allow the bar to fill up with people before you've been settled and debriefed. Are you ready?"

"I'm ready," Harry answered, smiling very timidly up at the doctor as they both slipped out of the car, Jonathon much more gracefully than Harry's tired stumbling and fumbling.

A rotten, stagnant stench walloped Harry's nose the moment he exited the safety of Jonathan's car, and the urge to pinch his nostrils and breathe through his shirt was strongly tempting, but he felt that that might be an insult to Jonathon as someone who lived here. The alley stank of animal urine and rotting garbage, a mixture that was further underlined by puddles of dirty water that were sunk in the deep rivets of the oddly cobblestoned ground through age.

"I've got to get 'Tiana to fix this place up. Smells like a bloody corpse out here," he heard Jonathon grumble to himself, and felt just the slightest bit relieved that the place he'd be living in wouldn't be the same as the dirty alley.

He followed along dutifully after Jonathan's tense figure, confused as to where the man was thinking of going when he was walking _toward a blank alley wall_ , but inevitably trusting that maybe this was another of the man's quirks. Relief touched at his fingers as they came to an abrupt stop at a mysterious black door almost hidden in the darkest crook of the wall. It was supposed to stay shut, by the handle-less surface it offered up, but Jonathon was a Vampire. He could punch a hole in it if he wanted!

It creaked open immediately as the tip of one finger grazed over its surface, and Harry gawked at the thin, wispy tendrils of smoke that crawled out of the darkness behind the door, and curled up out at them in ghostly fingers, before dissipating in thick clouds as they seemed to reach a certain length.

 _This.. does not seem good,_ he figured, after a moments hesitation wherein Jonathon merely stared hard at the door as if daring something to come out. But nothing did, although the smoke and fog that had been crawling out finally slowed and dwindled into nothingness.

It somehow made everything seem even more daunting than before.

Jonathon hooked a dexterous finger round the edge and yanked the door open, harrumphing when the darkness beyond finally yielded to their superior eyesight. It had protected a long, dark and cluttered hallway, one that Harry was reluctant to just go traversing down barefoot.

"Well," said Jonathon on a loaded sigh. "Home, sweet home. No need to wipe your feet on the welcome mat, runt. Wouldn't make a difference."

"'Runt'?" Harry queried queerly, disgruntled. 

Jonathon merely laughed. "You were the runt of the litter, Harry, so yes. _Runt_ ," he snorted, glancing back and behind at Harry as if amused at the picture he made. "You were thinking about how scary this place is, yeah? Well, it's only as scary as you make it seem. It's really only a dark building covered in layers and layers of dust, after all. No Boogeyman is coming out to get you. Unless you're afraid of the dust and the cockroaches, then I think you're fine."

Harry grunted and _just_ stopped himself from kicking the bastard in the back of the knees.

"Well, come on, then," Jonathon chuckled, prying the door open to admit the both of them, holding it open with an arm as he strode inside. Harry hurried after him before he could let it fall shut on him. "Tatiana will want to meet you before she has to clock in for work."

"What does she do?" Harry asked curiously, grimacing as he struggled past a stack of dirty frayed fabric and wood. He kicked the clothes away from him in disgust. "She obviously doesn't clean."

Jonathon chuckled lowly from up ahead. "That she doesn't. Cleaning is almost unheard of by her standards," he said, reaching a hand out to feel and palm at the wall bordering their left. Harry didn't copy his movements, since this place was apparently riddled with booby traps and false doors that could open up into some dangerous torture room. "She was never very good at cleaning up after herself, as a child and as an adult - much less a Vampire. It's one of the reasons she even opened this place in the first place. She could hire any amount of personnel she wanted to clean for her and let her go on with her night as she pleased."

That sounded a lot like what the Dursleys had forced on him, without all of the benefits of a paying job and forcing him to do the grunt work of a grown up. It didn't really give him hope that she'd be better at taking care of him than his aunt and uncle, though she did sound as if she could protect him by sheer reputation alone. One of the things this place could give him was a thicker skin than even his relatives could provide, along with the other necessary skills he needed for this new life.

Such as, luring other kids of his age out into the night and attacking them in the same way he'd been. 

His mood effectively soured by that thought, Harry forced himself to look around and follow along behind the giant git that was supposed to protect him. After a full minute of silent shuffling and inhaling the acrid cloud of dust, there was a muted thud that echoed gravely in the horrible hallway, and a light began to outline what he hoped was a door.

By God, it was, and with a small push, Jonathon had given him light and freedom from the dust clogged corridor that apparently led to an even deeper part of the long building. A part he wasn't sure he wanted to see.

And from the very moment Harry stepped into _Delirium_ and his eyes adjusted to the incredibly mixed dark and bright interior, his world was _again_ forever changed. Things no child, let alone an _adult_ , was ever supposed to see was laid out bare before him, in the very foundation of the floor to the thick wooden beams that held up the ceiling. Weirdly enough, Harry recognized the cold, harsh looking silver poles that stretched up from the many small round platforms dotted around the room to the ceiling, surrounded by low circular lounges that looked _uncomfortably_ used from time and, of course, use. They were from the videos Uncle Vernon liked to watch, sometimes, but women were supposed to be cleaning them. They were probably on their break.

Everything was colored in the darkest shades he'd ever seen in one place, providing little nooks and crannies in corners that even the massive Thorón was able to hide in, and creating the illusion of bottomless surfaces in the oddest of places. A narrow doorway stood near the one they exited, covered in layers of black tulle-like fabric that glittered queerly under the poor lighting, sashaying in an invisible wind and pulling into the hallway beyond. Or perhaps it was just his eyes that told him the lighting was bad, maybe it was the perfect brightness for their patrons.

It was like a wonderland for people like Isabella and the animalistic Werewolf.

Jonathon seemed to be at home and comfortable enough to leave his side, despite Harry's obvious insecurity, as he immediately made his way to the expensive bar area that showed off an entire gallery of colorful glass bottles. He was flagging down one of the few men and women buzzing around with empty trays and clipboards in their hands, and they seemed to flock to him in return. They all looked important enough, even if they were barely dressed and embarrassing Harry just to look at them; the men wore black slacks, and the women wore wispy black tulle skirts that barely hid their bottoms, with only a small see-through shirt adorning their torsos.

Somehow they didn't seem bothered by their lack of modesty.

Harry avoided looking at the women by peering around the room again, unsure of what he felt and distracting himself from the surreal reality of his situation. Like he'd done since he was even littler. It was more habit now than a tactic to take his mind from his desperately neglected person, and the sad life he led at the Dursleys.

The place was blessedly empty of the weird people waiting outside, and though the urge to pick up a mop and bucket sprung up as he fully tested the grittiness under his feet, he didn't dare touch anything. He wasn't anywhere that was kid-friendly, that was for damn certain, and his safety wasn't assured here if he took a wrong step.

“ _Potter! What did I say about cleaning my room? Never touch what isn't yours, Boy! Put that box back in the cupboard, NOW!”_

 _At least Aunt Petunia's advice would come in handy now,_ he thought morosely, carelessly toeing a tiny circle with his big toe on the gritty floor. _Can't say I'm thrilled to be someone else's slave, though._

It wasn't his choice to obey someone else's orders, and it never would be, but he had to make do with what he was given. He had no other options, no helpful skills and tools to help him live if he ran away from this place and anywhere he could recognize as being near Little Whinging. He had to resign himself, he had to be tougher, stronger than what he was at the Dursleys.

They may not have fed him, bathed him, cared for him, allowed him out of his cupboard for obscene amounts of time, or not raised a hand to him that was helpful, but all of that was nothing compared to what the people here could do to him. Isabella had been hard and unforgiving, but she'd been unnecessarily gentle for leaving him to die. Who knew what the people here would be like? What they'd do if he did something wrong.

There were all too many pictures in his head of how things could go wrong, and their perceived punishments for them. None of them were good.

“You must be him.”

Harry blinked owlishly and looked up at the woman standing before him, surprised that he hadn't noticed her there before – and there was an absurd moment where he had to catch himself before he could all-out gape at her. “Er, who would that be?” he asked croakily, mind working furiously to catch up.

She seemed terribly amused, if one considered the small crinkles in her eyes and the slight upward tilt of her lips as amusement. “I assume Jonathon only brought the one child with him and didn't adopt another on the way?” she asked, in a somewhat measured tone of voice that gave Harry an undue sense of relief. She didn't sound uptight, nor did she sound particularly proper. She sounded lax and kind, the complete opposite of Aunt Petunia. “I can barely afford to keep just the one here without convincing my patrons that I have a new menu item. It's going to be hard functioning without someone trying to attack you at every minute, I'll have to watch my back around everyone.”

Harry endeavoured to smile, though the promise of a new menu item frightened him almost as much as the long, slender curves of sharp teeth began to peek out from between her glossy lips. “I'm the only one he bought here, as far as I know, Miss,” he said politely. “My name is Harry Potter. Are you Jonathon's cousin?”

Unsurprisingly, his name broke the careful countenance she was presenting, and her eyes became distant and downright _glacial_. “You mean 'brought' here,” she corrected faintly, though no less kindly. “ _Delirium_ welcomes you, Harry Potter. I'm Tatiana Milcombe, indeed the cousin of the very annoyance known as Jonathon and owner of this bar. I apologize if I seem rude, I wasn't aware that Jonathon was bringing a.. celebrity. It makes things more complicated than before."

Harry's brows furrowed in concern for Jonathan's well-being at the angry intonation in her voice, a frown slipping across his face. "I'm sorry to incon- inconvenience you, Mrs Milcombe," he said softly. "But I was ordered here by the Council, not by Jonathon. He didn't know who I was in the Hospital, not until we were on the way to the Council."

"It's  _Miss_ _,_ Harry," Tatiana chided him mildly, her hard brown eyes thawing out just enough to glimmer at him in amusement, if a little exasperatedly. "But as you're our new roomie and employee, you can call me Tatiana, or Tiana for short. I hate it when people use my full name. Makes me sound so _blegh_ _._ "

It didn't take much to make him smile at her goofiness, but he wasn't nearly comfortable enough to actually laugh in front of her - let alone  _at her_. He hadn't been able to at the Dursley's and he wouldn't here, not until he knew what would happen if he did, what punishments he'd get. "I like your name, Miss Tatiana. It sounds really pretty," he told her shyly, fiddling anxiously with his fingers and fighting the urge to wipe his clammy palms on his pants. 

Tatiana seemed to find his nervousness endearing, as she chuckled at him and shook her head with a wry grin on her mouth. The swipe of a tongue over her shiny lips was the only thing to indicate that she was just as nervous as he was. "Well, while I find this conversation absolutely riveting, Harry dear, I think we should get you settled upstairs and into some new clothes," she said. "You remind me of one of those dying patients in the ICU ward at Jonathon's Hospital, and while we are technically dead, that's no reason to go around looking like we are."

Harry glanced down at himself, at the thin clothes that Jonathon had shoved into his arms at the Hospital room he'd woken up in. They weren't terribly flashy or new, but they were a far sight better than what he'd arrived in - before the attack and after. _Do I really look that bad?_ he wondered worriedly. _This is the second time someone's compared me to a dead person. Does that mean I stink?_

"Come on, you little fashionista," Tatiana said on an exasperated sigh, the corners of her lips tilted upward in a tiny grin. "I had Sasha and Beau grab you some clothes earlier, so your closet should be fit to burst with all sorts of bits and bobs you might like."

Harry gave her a wan smile and started after her as she abruptly wheeled on the spot and strode to a doorway set off the the side, concealed in one of those dark patches. He pondered if that was the reason they had so many spaces like this, if they were disguising hidden doorways they didn't want the customers to see. Not until they specifically pointed it out, anyway.

Somehow, he didn't think that was the reason.

The doorway immediately gave way to a set of stairs that led up to the second floor, a steepness to it that acted almost like a ladder and gave him the sense of climbing a mountain. It was nothing like Privet Drive, just like the dark decor set about in the rest of the place. It was almost something of polar opposites, or a mirror universe - for surely that's what had happened to him; He'd taken a wrong turn somewhere and jumped into the wrong world, where mythical creatures existed and he was one, and the Dursleys didn't exist!

He wished it was so. But nothing was quite so fantastic as that, neither was there luck so good in the world that it affected even Harry, the unluckiest of all little boys. 

_"You ungrateful little wretch! How dare you dirty the clothes we gave you with those useless tears - your Uncle works extremely hard to provide for this family, and I'll not stand by and let you ruin the things we give you out of sheer pettiness! Stand up straight, Boy! Tuck in that shirt, tie those shoes, wipe your nose - and for goodness sake, stop that bloody crying! There are far worse off children in the world, and here you are crying over missed a few meals! Get to your cupboard before your Uncle comes home and gets the belt out - I'm absolutely disgusted in you and your horrible selfishness!"_

Luck, in general, wasn't a fan of him.

"Here we are," Tatiana's voice floated to him from up ahead, and he blinked rapidly to come back to the moment. He was standing in the threshold of an enormously open house, like someone had gutted a warehouse and converted it into a fashionable, breathable home. It was nothing like he'd been in before, where the windows were larger than even Uncle Vernon's considerable girth and the only enclosed rooms were theirs and the bathroom. He loved it - it was nothing like his cupboard!

"It's not much compared to the life you use to have, I bet, but it's something to be proud of at least," she said uncomfortably, hovering a little awkwardly before a large L-shaped lounge that very obviously aimed for comfort rather than style. It didn't match into the kitchenette behind her, or the large oak table sitting beside the stretch of cupboards. It made everything feel all the more inspiring to Harry, and it was no where near the stuffy old setting and decor Aunt Petunia had in her home. "There's not much privacy here either, unfortunately, but the privy is closed off - and our rooms, too, and that's all we really expected to need over the years. This is the living room right here, the kitchen and dining room are behind me, and the laundry room and bathroom are off to your left, behind those doors," she said, gesturing shortly to the brown painted doors set two arms length apart on the red-brick wall.

The building was apparently bigger than Harry had initially thought for two people, although, with how big the club seemed downstairs, it wasn't a wonder that they needed somewhere so big. They were wildly popular, and that meant loads of people trying to squish into one room. They'd have needed something so big to prevent any fights or arguments breaking out. Harry was finding himself more and more impressed.

"We're all sharing one bathroom, mind, so I'll thank you to keep your shelf clutter-free and clean," she continued to say, voice brooking no argument as if anticipating him flying off into a strop at not having his own bathroom. He disappointed her by remaining quiet and dutifully nodding instead. "The same is to be said about your room and whatever you pick up or move around. As long as you keep everything neat and tidy, we'll all be the best of friends," she said, rather oddly to Harry's ears, but his mind was already slinking off into another of his dreadful memories, whether she was telling him something important or not. He couldn't help it.

_"Alright then, Boy, you may be used to living under your lazy Mother's roof, but here you'll be raised differently. You must remember these important rules, and if you do them well like a good boy, punishments will be kept to a minimum," said Aunt Petunia seriously, blue eyes hard and unforgiving - a sight four year old Harry hadn't ever seen directed at him before. Except from the Red Man, he couldn't forget him._

_"Now I know you can talk," she continued sternly, when Harry merely stared up at her meekly from his spot kneeling on the floor, tears held at bay by the sheer force of his budding stubbornness. His cheek was an unnatural red, courtesy of the hand that was currently clenched in his aunt's lap. He hadn't been allowed up on the settee with his aunt. "So you will address your Uncle and I as 'Aunt Petunia' and 'Uncle Vernon' only. We will not tolerate nonsense babbling or the shortening of our names in any way. And most important of all, you will not speak unless spoken to. Do you understand, Boy?"_

_Harry nodded weakly - and gasped in horrified pain as that claw-like hand struck out once again. A big fat tear crawled down his stinging cheek, his head slowly coming back to face her from the position it'd been forced into, and he forced himself to nod at her. "Y-yes, Aunt P-Petunia," he struggled to say through the bitter lump in his throat._

_Aunt Petunia nodded briskly. "Well done," she said tartly. "Perhaps you will remember this the next time you decide to act so rudely in front of a lady. Your good for nothing Mother may have tolerated it, but I most certainly will not. You would do best to remember that."_

_Harry gave a shaky nod, gently palming the water from his smarting cheek so it wouldn't dry and become itchy like it was wont to do. "Yes, Aunt Petunia," he answered immediately, if a little wobbly._

_"Good. Now, for your chores.."_

Harry jerked in surprise when someone cleared their throat, automatically cringing at the loud noise attacking his poor ears. The tacky floral print of Aunt Petunia's living room finally faded from view, to be replaced by a much more pleasant sight. 

Tatiana was gazing at him closely, eyes contemplative and unsure, for an unwelcome change. "Harry, before we go any further into the house, there's something really important we need to talk about," she began uneasily, and gently lowered herself onto the plump lounge as if expecting him to join her.

He didn't.

"This is the first time we've ever dealt with a kid, before," she informed him uneasily, shuffling her high heeled feet uncomfortably and knotting her fingers together on her lap. "And it's because of that that we need to warn you of a few things. We're more likely to get some things wrong with you than a blind person reading a book - because what responsible, mature guardian would raise a child in an environment like this? None, I can tell you for sure.

“But while you're here, I'm going to do my best to make sure you get outta here as unscathed as possible, preferably with the skill range of a three century old Vampire if I can fit it in. You were lumped with this life unfairly - it wouldn't be right to force you to live like one of us when you've barely experienced being human," she said, voice soft and uncomfortably knowledgeable.

Harry frowned in consternation, discomforted by the wary determination that seemed to be growing on the woman's face every second he breathed. "You don't have to baby me, Miss Tatiana," he told her hesitantly, and hastened to explain himself when her slim eyebrows arched upward. "I've been pulling my weight around my family's house since I was four. My aunt wouldn't let me live at her house and do nothing, she made sure I had chores to do every second of the day. I had to mow the lawns, garden, cook, clean and do the laundry. I can help you. It doesn't matter that I'm new, point is that I'm here --"

"And you shouldn't be," she cut him off very shortly. "You should be at your relative's home, sleeping off the meal you'd have just eaten and gone off to the land of dreams, ready to wake to the next day of the perfect Summer. You shouldn't have been attacked and turned - it's forbidden for a reason, and this is exactly why! _You shouldn't be standing in front of me ready to sell yourself to stay safe!_ " 

Harry fell into a troubled silence, drifting to the closest wall to rest his aching, throbbing back. His head ached and pounded with the knowledge that was constantly bursting into it, and he didn't know what to do to relieve it. He didn't know what to say to her - what he _could_ say. There was nothing that he, a kid, could say to an adult to comfort them when it was his fault they were discomforted in the first place. Spiraling out of control isn't something he was used to often, despite the hellish state of living he'd had with his relatives, but that's exactly what was happening right now. The adult of the situation was breaking down in front of him, his guardians were confused and caught short-footed, handling a kid they hadn't ever seen before - what could he say to them? What was there to say to make things better?

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have blown up at you like that," he heard her utter softly, guiltily. "I'm just - I guess I'm just.."

"Scared," Harry supplied for her quietly, offering her a timid smile when she looked up at him sorely. "It happens to everyone," he said gently.

"You're too sweet," Tatiana exhaled deeply, rolling her shoulders slowly to relax them from their stiff, rigid position. She rubbed a deft hand on the back of her neck, head bowed as if to pray to her coffee table, and Harry wondered if she sat in that position enough to find it comfortable. "But you shouldn't be coddling me like I'm a child, I'm fine. It's just this fucked up situation that has me reeling, I'm not in my element and it's getting to me. I'll get over it eventually, but it's almost too much to take in one go."

"I know," Harry commiserated, nodding sadly. "But I'm glad to be here instead of at my Uncle's, even if I have to work double hard to stay here."

Tatiana laughed bitterly, rolling her eyes skyward, and Harry was surprised to see tears glimmering there, for the odd moment thinking that she'd actually burst out crying. He shuffled against the wall awkwardly at the very thought of someone crying, especially her. "And isn't that the kicker right there?" she asked sourly. "You're eight years old and already selling yourself in an adult bar. Can't the Fates be kind to one of us just the once?"

"What do you mean by that?" Harry asked hesitantly, fiddling with his fingers nervously. "By selling myself, I mean," he elaborated when she looked at him bemusedly. "You said I'd be selling myself.. does that mean I have to give people my body?"

"Yes, and no."

 _What the Hell does that mean?_ Harry thought warily, and was rather shaken by the battering of images his mind gave him. The visage of him exchanging a foot to a man for money struck him horrified. _I'm not going through Hell just to get somewhere worse. I'd die before that happened!_

Harry opened his mouth to ask more about it, but was beaten to the punch by Tatiana rising form her seat with a sharp sniffle and strutting to a closed door that was situated off to the right of the room. "No more questions about that, Harry. Please," she said hoarsely, absently taking in a deep breath as she pushed the door open with a gentle shove. The room behind it was light enough that he could make out the end of a bed, but that was all. "Here's where you'll be staying. Please get changed and get into bed, I'll bring some food in to you in fifteen minutes," she told him quietly, swiping a hand over her eyes to rid herself of any water. 

And then she was running past him and down the stairs at an incredible speed he almost couldn't keep track of, swallowed eagerly by the darkness that waited at the landing, and out into the mysterious bar for what seemed like an indeterminable amount of time. 

Harry stared into the darkness wordlessly for a few minutes, too stunned by her abrupt disappearance to even think about moving, before her requests caught up in his mind and he mechanically meandered into his new bedroom. He barely took in the sights and decorations as he shrugged off the stiff, rigid clothes the Hospital kept for spares and swapped them for a pair of breathable, stretchy cotton shorts and shirt he'd barely caught by the tips of his fingers. 

He didn't even realize he'd gotten into bed and had been sitting there for ten minutes until Tatiana entered and slid a tray onto his lap, deigning to give him a weary smile before leaving once more, shutting the door softly behind her as if slamming it would break him. That left him to stare down at the tray blankly, shock clearly too big of an emotion for him to handle at that moment.

There was a glass filled to the brim with what he knew by gut instinct alone was blood, and the bowl was filled with a rich smelling chicken noodle soup. An unlikely and incredibly odd duo, but it wasn't likely to hurt him any if Tatiana thought it alright for him to consume. He gulped down the soup like it was a cold drink of water, despite it being hotter than hot, before taking up the glass and knocking it back like he would milk. It was thick, velvety and poured like melted chocolate or syrup down his tender, aching throat, and it somehow managed to taste like a delicious lolly water rather than what he knew was someone's life. He couldn't stop drinking it until it was all gone, as if he were a mosquito suckling at a sleeping pig. 

It was almost tempting him to lick the glass clean, but he knew from past experience that doing something like that was practically begging for a smack. So he set the glass down beside his bed, and the tray and bowl as well and laid down. It was so late, his energy so low that he didn't remember falling asleep, or how he'd gotten under the now sweltering bedcovers, but he knew by the early morning light that something was awry. 

He woke up screaming.


	10. You Don't Own Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: More than a bit of swearing in this chapter, ladies and gents, not to mention some not so small mentions of promiscuity and cheating as well, so hold onto the closest available buckle or g-string, because it's a hell of a bumpy ride.
> 
> Please enjoy!

   **You Don't Own Me**

 _ **Sunday, 21st of August, 1988.  
Delirium,** _ **Muggle London, Unknown Location.**

Tatiana looked up from her book as the heavy footsteps of her cousin trailed up the staircase, his shoulders rounded and low under the casual black sweater he was known for wearing on work days. Her eyes darted from his dejected frame to the open door of Harry's room, still splintered and hanging dangerously off their hinges, but otherwise silent and still. She strained her ears to listen for any changes in the boy's breathing, in case Jonathon had made too much noise for his no doubt tender ears, but there was no such change.

She relaxed in her seat and flexed her tense fingers that were clamped around the slim, more than crumpled pages of the book in her lap. They ached in their clawed position, but it was all she could do to make the room silent for the little boy. She'd muted the television, turned off any electrical appliances in their humble abode that made any noise - and some that she was paranoid would suddenly start screeching, like the microwave. The washing machine was also among the few, and even as she sat in the living room, she kept a sharp eye on it from around the corner.

Jonathon slunk into the room tiredly and slumped down into the seat beside her, kicking his feet up on the coffee table with two quiet thuds and dislodging the few magazines she kept there. Her nose scrunched up in anger and she clenched her jaw, actively working to stop the scalding hot words from escaping her at the immaturity of his actions. It seemed to be that Jonathon had forgotten about their guest, who was well into the Change and was more than tender, in a matter of speaking.

At her quelling look, Jonathon merely rolled his eyes and allowed his head to loll back on the couch.

 _Stay quiet, he's only trying to rile you up, Tia. Don't fall into the trap,_ she chided herself, and in doing so, firmed her grip on the thick novel in her hands and stared determinedly down at the words, which looked more like scribbles than any actual words. She had never been further from the plot of  _Interview With A Vampire_ than she was now.  _Everything_ _has to be silent for Harry._ _Too much noise and the poor thing'll wake up before he's ready and all sorts of disastrous things could happen, Sorry, Anne, but you're not dragging me into your lovely work of art this time. Perhaps later._

“Wotcher, Tiana,” Jonathon finally whispered, swinging a bleary eye to stare at her balefully when she didn't so much as flinch, as if scolding her for not greeting him already. “And how are you this fine evening? Good? Well gee, that's great. Me? Oh, well I'm fine, too. Had a busy day at work but, oh well, such is life.”

 _As if you actually work when you go there,_ she thought darkly, a muted scoff escaping her. _Probably suck on every neck you come across, you sex-addicted fiend._ “Hello, Jon,” she greeted flatly, and continued reading the novel in her fingers.

Jonathon scowled half-heartedly and pawed at the pages with tired, chemical smelling hands, managing to press a crease in one of her favorite chapters. An exasperated noise left him when she snatched it out of his grip and slid it carefully onto the coffee table, nose upturned at the horrid stench of Muggle hospitals and miffed at his incessant pawing

She absolutely detested the smells the man brought home with him after a visit to the Muggle Hospital, the smell of medicine that clung to his skin even through the elastic gloves he was required to wear. She didn't know how he could stand the smell of such things, even the tiniest hint from his hands could send her running, but she figured that since he'd been damaged in countless other ways, his sense of smell would have been affected negatively as well.

It made sense.

“Still possessive as shite, then?” he snarked at her not so quietly, and Tatiana could swear that she'd heard fabric moving from Harry's room. “And here I thought having a child to care for would mature you -”

“Shush!” Tatiana snapped under her breath, clenching her hands into irritated fists as her heart urged her to put him in his place - for annoying her little room-mate in his time of need. But she couldn't do that when everything was meant to be quiet. When she went off, it was much like that of a firework display - loud and seemingly endless until the last spark had faded. “You'll wake Harry up with the way you're carrying on! Do you want to rush him?”

The concern that welled up beneath the snarky exterior reassured her that her worry wasn't in vain, nor was her belief that while he may think from time to time that he was heartless, that he had some hidden selflessness deep inside somewhere that was at work on the sly.

His blue eyes darted to the open doorway that loomed almost maliciously by the stairwell, the shadows cast inside looking unnaturally dark to their penetrating eyes, and she almost dared to relax at the overwhelming face of his concern, before she remembered that the reason for said concern was Harry himself. Tatiana hadn't dared to venture inside his room as of yet, not since yesterday morning when the little boy woke up screaming in agony, she didn't want to chance Fate revoking the right for Harry to live.

There was a reason why their kind hovered nearby as their kin transitioned, and not by their side as they struggled under the weight of the Change; They were cursed beings, such things were finicky if pressed and often bore superstition that was to be adhered to. Even she, as non-traditionalist as she was, followed that rule.

“Has he woken since I left this morning?” Jonathon asked quietly, eyes swirling with thousands of thoughts that pointed directly to worryingly bad things.

“He hasn't woken since yesterday morning,” Tatiana replied just as quietly, her gaze trained on the shadows seemingly moving inside the room so dauntingly. “I haven't tried to wake him yet, I didn't want to leave anything to chance. He's just a boy, Jonathon,” she sighed sadly. “He shouldn't be going through something like this.”

“You can't really expect things to go as planned for a normal Vamp, Tiana,” Jonathon reminded her under his breath, if a little chidingly. “There's other factors involved in this, too many venoms and conflicting natures battling for supremacy inside him. Lycanthropy is the natural enemy of the Vampire, and the Wizard in him believes both to be just as horrible as the other. It's.. more than likely a bloodbath.”

Tatiana winced and sunk in her seat uncomfortably, drawing her feet up under her in a nervous action she'd once thought she'd kicked to the side. “I couldn't imagine the pain he's going through,” she admitted. “I've wanted to go in there and hold his hand all day, but I'm not brave enough to face him. He hadn't made a sound all day, I assumed he was turning just as we had.”

Jonathon looked at her oddly, heavy eyebrows furrowed over his constantly churning eyes. “He hasn't made a sound?” he echoed queerly. “Are you sure?”

“Not a peep.”

The concern building in her head grew ever stronger at the strange look on Jonathon's face, and it practically soared at an all time high when her cousin immediately jumped to his feet and swept into Harry's room, worry scrawled plainly on his face. She followed at his heels, gnawing at her lower lip at the sight of Jonathon's crouched figure, leaning over the tiny limp figure hidden under the bed-covers.

Her heart leapt into her throat at the sight the little boy made; Skin bleached of all color, throwing the heavily flushed cheeks into stark contrast; Hair matted to his skull like a freshly coated layer of paint; Eyes fluttering wildly under paper-thin spidery eyelids; Limp form covered in a thick layer of sweat. He was laying rigidly on his back, arms held tight to his sides. He looked like an Angel fallen from grace.

And she could almost feel the heat of his fever from where she was standing by the broken door.

“He's feverish,” Jonathon's fervent voice snapped her to attention. “He's too hot, his temperature needs to be brought down before his brain fries. Get some hand-towels and a bowl of cold water, and be quick about it,” he instructed tensely, even as he went to work gently prodding and palming at the boy's shivering torso and head.

Tatiana was quick to dash out of the room and to the kitchen, where she very nearly ransacked the cupboards for a large bowl and raided the linen cupboard for all of their hand-towels. She filled the bowl half-way, too impatient to let it fill to the top, and raced back into the room with her arms laden with said items nearly faster than she left it. She shoved the bowl into Jonathon's lap as she did so, uncaring whether it slopped over and soaked him or not. But then again, they didn't have Vampire senses for nothing, and a bit of cold water never killed anyone.

“Won't it be too cold?” she fretted worriedly, when a towel was snatched from her hands and dunked into the water. “Will it shock him?” she continued fervently, to no avail. She hovered over his shoulder as he dabbed at the sweaty face, not caring for the way it seemed to make the man tense and pressured with her leaning over him like she was. She was watching Harry, the way he mumbled in his sleep and his head rolled towards the damp towel, as if unconsciously seeking the cool.

“Oi, will you back up and let me do my job?” Jonathon snapped lowly, fangs flashing at her in the dull light. It brought her own fangs to the forefront and flashing at him in retaliation. He didn't seem to appreciate it all that much. “This isn't the first time I've brought down a fever in a kid! Quit hovering and give me some God damn space!” he snarled.

“Then don't argue with me and get back to work!” Tatiana snapped back, very nearly swinging a hand at the back of his head. The only thing that stopped her from doing so was poor Harry. “Wet another towel and help him already, he's overheating!”

“Yelling isn't going to help, you stupid slag,” Jonathon muttered angrily, but quickly freed up his other hand to dunk another towel in the water and squeeze the excess out.

Tatiana snatched the damp towel from him before he could begin maneuvering it on the boy, and quickly, but gently lifted Harry's head from his pillow and laid the towel down under his neck. The small sound of relief that left the boy's lips gave her a sense of satisfaction, and she couldn't help but trail a hand over his cheek, a smile crooking her mouth as the little tyke sought out her chilled skin.

“M.. Mum?” Harry croaked out feebly.

“I'm not your Mum, Harry,” she told him softly without so much as skipping a beat, continuing to stroke his boiling cheek when his head rolled even more in their direction, which in turn pressed his face even more into her hand. “It's Tiana, your friend.”

“T.. Tiana?”

“And Jonathon, mate,” Jonathon added, throwing an annoyed look at her from the corners of his eyes. She couldn't help but note that he almost immediately returned to staring at Harry, though. “We're helping you get through this. I know it hurts and you feel tired, but this is the best thing for you. You can get through this, Harry, you're strong. We'll be here every step of the way.”

“Hurts,” Harry cried feebly, prying his gluey eyelids open to peer up at the two blurry figures standing over him. “Hurts so.. much,” he croaked brokenly.

“I know, darling,” Tatiana shushed him gently, sweeping a nimble hand delicately over his forehead, tugging the damp towel there from Jonathon's fingers and dabbing at his face instead. “But this is the way it's gotta be. You're almost finished, I promise, just a little longer to go before you're alright again.”

“His eyes are fully dilated,” Jonathon made a quick note of, leaning forward to study the stark white features of the boy in front of them. Tatiana glanced down at him doubtfully, arching an eyebrow as a tiny notepad appeared out of nowhere and a fountain pen was seen scribbling away at the pages in manic fashion.

“His eyes aren't supposed to be like that,” Tatiana murmured, peering over her cousin's shoulder to study the notepad that was very quickly filling up with notes. She blanched at the few words she could decipher from Jonathon's unintelligible scribble. “'Starving'? Why aren't we giving him anything to soothe his hunger? He needs blood!”

Jonathon skewered her with a sharp look, so much so that she immediately fell silent and still, save for the few movements she made to mop up Harry's face. “We can't do anything right now,” he said. “We could fuck up the rhythm his body's made and put his life in jeopardy. The Change could have very well made some advances in him that we won't know about until the need arises – he could be allergic to blood for all we know! There's so much that can go wrong, and if we do anything right now anything could happen. He won't just be a Vampire, Tiana. There's two other species in him now. Understand?”

Tatiana nodded once.

Jonathon crooked an eyebrow dubiously, but nodded firmly, seemingly satisfied with her non-verbal agreement for the moment. “You'll want to change the towel on his neck, it'll be just as warm as he is by now.”

**-oOoOoOo-**

It was very tense that night, with the two of them acting as Harry's Doctor's in arms in tandem, one staying by the boy's side for a few short hours and changing every so often, if only to give each other a break. Unfortunately, however much Tatiana wanted to be the one to help Harry, she also had a job that demanded her attention constantly, whereas Jonathon had just finished a night-shift at the Hospital and was free until two days time. The lucky bastard.

She hadn't had a night off in centuries, the unruly patrons she tended to serve wouldn't allow it. She was the majority owner of the club, and that weight alone was enough to sway the attendees to behave themselves. Lest they find themselves out on their rears with no idea where they'd previously been, having the privy of knowing where  _Delirium_ was revoked ruthlessly.

Just from her absence alone there were many fights that night down in  _Delirium._ _H_ ad she not arrived at all, the entire building would have become a slaughter-house overnight. It was a stroke of luck for all of them that she even showed when she had, very quickly ending any squabbles before they truly started.

As it was, she'd had a very hard time not beheading every Vampire, Wolf and Succubus that came her way. Any problems she noticed were squashed without remorse, and if that 'problem' had been a hand or foot, then it wasn't any skin off her nose, was it?

And it was all going so smoothly. Her drinks and food were all being drunk and eaten, all her tables were filled, her dancers were enjoying serving the lusting patrons, and her bar was just hitting full swing. It wouldn't be long before she was back home with Jonathon and Harry, an eventless end to an eventful night.

It was just her luck that just as it was getting to the good parts, it all started to go bad.

“Tiana, babe! I couldn't find you by the dance floor earlier. You been ignoring me? I thought we agreed that there were no more secrets or evasive actions!”

Tatiana growled under her breath and glared at the man currently leaning on her bar, bearded face leering at her almost suggestively, if it weren't for the pout on his face and the slight hint of fear on his breath. Among certain brands of alcohol, of course.

“I'm not in the mood for you tonight, _William_ ,” she sneered, more than mildly irked by his batting eyelashes. “Buy a drink or go fuck some poor girl, I don't care what you do. But leave me the fuck _alone_ _._ ”

William sighed and leaned on the wood even more, ignoring its soft protesting groan under the heady music reverberating around the room, and the hustle and bustle of the dancing area. “Aww, come on now, Love, I didn't mean to do all tha' to you! I was – now I'm being honest, on my way to you with my dick out and she tripped me!”

“How unfortunate for you,” she replied flatly, gaze just as hard as the lemon knife in front of her.

“It was!” William agreed immediately. “She's nowhere near as hot as you, babe. I got her off -”

Tatiana scoffed angrily and shoved him off the bar, uncaring if her nails dug into his shoulders as painfully as his face said they had. “Yeah, you did just that, didn't you?!” she hissed. “Must've fucked her hard and good enough to get her off _on the stairs to my home_ _._  I hope your dick shrivels up and falls off, you pathetic coward! If you didn't want to shack up with me, you should have at least said so instead of letting me find you like that!”

William's face twisted sourly at that, and he exhaled gustily, rubbing an absent hand at his shoulder. “I know what I did was wrong, Tiana,” he began lowly, voice heavy and slurred with adrenaline, fear and remorse.

“Tatiana,” Tatiana insisted stiffly.

“But I didn't think when she came onto me, I just acted like I always had,” he continued, undisturbed by the growing look of murder on Tatiana's face. “I've always been impulsive, from way back in my human years when I'd hit puberty to now. But I – I was scared of you. You just wanted so much from me, so much commitment that my dick almost _did_  shrivel up and fall off, whereas I'd never so much as had a girlfriend before. But what else was I supposed to do, Tiana? A hot bird came onto me and shoved me to the wall with her skirt hiked up her hips and showing me her.. _yeah_ _._ So I fucked her. What else can I do to make up for it?”

Tatiana gave him points for saying it so bluntly to her face, but that was about it. On the very short list of things she hated, cheating was right at the top with murder, rape, incest, child molesting, and child turning. “If you'd been afraid of what I wanted, you should have just said so and talked to me about it like a grown man. A relationship isn't a one way street,” she said tensely. “And you would have known that if you'd have had the balls to talk to me about it.”

“I am talking to you about it –”

“After three weeks!” she snapped. “You can't just come crawling back after you did something so horrible. You can't even come back, I'm banning you –”

William snapped forward frantically, face pale and fearful, dewed with alcohol soaked sweat. “Please don't!” he begged hoarsely. “I'm sorry it happened, and I know for sure that bird is sorry, too – she tried coming onto me again, but I pushed her off. I almost fuckin' killed her for ya, Love! I'm so sorry, Tiana! Let me make it up to you – let's go up to your office and do that little routine you wanted, where I bend you over your desk or you ride me in your chair, either way I don't fucking care. Just give me a chance!”

Tatiana didn't reply to that. Instead she turned to her fellow bartender for the night and tapped his shoulder to get his attention. “I'm leaving it all up to you tonight,” she told him. “Make sure you lock up tight, I don't want him getting in,” she said, nudging her chin in the direction of the still begging Werewolf.

“I'll make sure everything's closed up,” Lukas promised lowly, as emotionless as always.

Tatiana smiled at him thinly in gratitude and squeezed his shoulder, allowing him to go back to serving the beyond interested, almost naked Succubus at his front. Tatiana was grimly vindicated when she noticed William's dreary eyes wander helplessly to the generously undressed woman.

 _Yeah 'I miss you' alright,_ she thought darkly.  _You only miss warming my bed._

Their little spat had ruined the pleasured ambiance of her patrons surrounding the bar, so, being the respectful owner she was, she swiftly turned and ducked out of the bar area to make her way to her home. Her safety. But she in no way ran with her tail tucked between her legs like a coward, it was just a way of picking her fights. If William really wanted to crawl back to her on hands and knees, he would do it the next night. Or the night after that, and so on.

She ducked and weaved around the heavily girating, erotic bodies dancing on her dance floor and almost bolted up the stairs that quickly revealed themselves.

His breath had stuck with her nose even through the lusty clouds of perspiration and animalistic hunger. It burned in her chest where she'd breathed it in, the painful memories of finding the man she'd thought she'd loved on the very stairs she was running up, fucking some faceless woman. It hurt, and it pissed her off, but she couldn't bring herself to turn around and face him.

Tonight was just not the night for it.

Thankfully, the smell and music of the club was dulled majorly due to the magic she'd used to furnish their apartment, and by the time she was at the threshold of their home there was no lingering mess of the club, barring the gentle sounds of the actual instruments tingling at her ears. None of the heavily accented bass to shake the pictures off the walls, or the lust and hunger from the patrons.

Despite living above a den of iniquity, nothing but faint bursts of music affected them. And she couldn't be happier about it.

Her eyes found Jonathon sprawled out on the couch, bare of anything barring his favored black sweatpants, and his equally favored scented candles on the coffee table. His eyes rolled around to meet her and crinkled in amusement. “Have fun at work, Cousin?” he drawled humorously, smirking lazily. “You're home ridiculously early for a Sunday night.”

Tatiana stuck her middle finger up at him as she jogged to the refrigerator in their kitchen, where she very quickly located a Blood Bag and her favorite coffee mug. She set her dinner in the microwave for one minute exactly, and nuked it with a hard press of her finger. “The dickhead was hounding me at the bar, so I decided to ditch working tonight,” she explained sourly, while she paused the timer at thirty seconds and stirred up the blood to relieve it of any lumps.

It was very soupy, with the coagulated blood rimming at the top, but she persevered and placed it back inside the microwave to heat once again.

“He tried to apologize again?” Jonathon snorted.

“Worse, actually,” Tatiana groaned, as the microwave gave one last sound and she took out her meal. Deciding to make Jonathon's night just that little bit more annoying for him, she moved to the spot at his knees and kicked at his legs to move. He rolled his eyes and lifted them to make room for her on the couch, and she rather gracelessly flopped onto the cushions with an exhausted sigh. “He tried to proposition me.”

“He what?” was Jonathon's flat reply.

“It's really rather remarkable how alike we are, Cousin dearest,” Tatiana remarked innocently, nimbly fingering at the rim of her mug as Jonathon propped himself up to stare at her. “My reaction was much the same.”

“I hope you gutted the prick,” Jonathon seethed angrily, shoving himself into a sitting position at her side. Tatiana cringed when his foot grazed at the French Vanilla candle closest, but there was no other reaction from her cousin but a low growl. “Bloody  _Lycan!_  Who does he think he is, coming in here asking you to fuck after he cheated on you so heinously? At least when humans cheat on each other they don't do it right outside their homes!”

“You could always neuter him, you know,” Tatiana suggested sweetly, smiling at the wry look on her cousin's face. “Oh, do calm yourself, Jon, he didn't try anything. He just begged at my feet like the spanked puppy he is and tried to proposition me.”

“And you said no.”

Tatiana looked at him grimly. “As if I'd say yes after.. _that_ _._ ”

Jonathon merely sucked at his teeth quietly, choosing to stare at the flickering candles on the coffee table instead of answering. Tatiana merely suckled at her Blood Mug silently, observing the flickering shadows of the stairway in contrast to the light of the candles.

After a moment of quiet in which they sat nicely next to each other, Jonathon finally uttered a sigh and slouched in his seat, knees knocking at the coffee table as if in testament to his not inconsiderable height. “I knew Werewolves were a horrible species, but I didn't think they'd do  _that_. They're even worse than we are when it comes to finding the right one,” he muttered, obviously still irked by her previous ordeal despite the many minutes he'd had to cool off. “William seemed even more so. But I suppose lusting after a particular person is a lot different from loving them.”

“It's entirely different,” Tatiana concurred quietly, sipping indelicately at her Blood mug. “I mean, I knew he wasn't for me, but still. We'd been together for two months.”

“Which is a hell of a long time considering our life-long mission to sniff out our perfect other-halves,” Jonathon muttered.

Tatiana hummed in agreement and allowed the conversation to lull into silence for another time, quietly sipping at her blood with tiny smiles of pleasure at the delicious warmth the liquid provided her. It was the perfect balm to her ache for her horrible night, rather like a foot massage after running ten miles non-stop. Even though said blood was still thick and soupy from being refrigerated and then microwaved.

Nothing beat drinking blood from the source. Not even these convenient Blood Bags.

“How's Harry?” she decided to ask, when she noticed her mug was emptying very quickly and Jonathon was beginning to doze at her side. She'd noticed that he hadn't jumped up to run to Harry's room when she'd arrived, as they'd taken to doing in a cousinly competition to be most helpful.

Rather like siblings squabbling at their mother's side to lick the spoon after a cake had been mixed.

“His fever broke an hour and a half ago,” Jonathon said sheepishly, offering a tiny apologetic smile at her blank stare. “Sorry, I was too side-tracked by the events of your night to tell you. Anyway, he's managing much better than before. He's progressed to what I hope is the end of the Change, and he should be emerging from his sleep sometime tomorrow.”

“It's odd that it's gone on as long as it has,” she remarked quietly. “Other species aside, I mean,” she explained, at Jonathon's pointedly exasperated look. “I'm just worried that he won't wake up from it at all. He's a strong kid, even I can see that, but there's no such thing as someone stronger than the Divine. If Fate wants him, She could take him at a moments notice..”

“And if you keep thinking like that, it could happen,” Jonathon said sternly. “Don't test Fate.”

“I don't mean to,” she grumbled. “I just keep thinking the worst – I'm a fucking pessimist, Jonathon, you can't expect me to be optimistic about his situation. That's unrealistic,” she groaned exhaustedly, turning her eyes heavenward when Jonathon continued to stare at her stonily. “He has as much of a chance as lightning striking four times in the same place. Don't delude yourself, Cousin. His fever may have broken, but he's still not done.”

“What's unrealistic about this situation is your unending ability to see the negatives and not the positives.”

“Hence the term 'pessimist',” she said.

“No, you're being cynical because this in all of our history has never happened before,” he said with annoyance. “Marius was much the same, doubtful, soured to the idea – all of them were, actually! But none of them counted on Harry's unusual ability to turn horrible circumstances to his advantage.”

“I fail to see how this could be to his advantage.”

“He was abused from the age of four, Tatiana.”

Tatiana cringed around her mug and nodded grimly. “I gathered that from the way he shied away from any contact,” she admitted reluctantly. “But being  _Turned_ , Jonathon. He may have been abused, but he was at least safe, human –  _alive_.”

“I don't count being abused as safe,” he snapped, sitting up in his seat to look at her most angrily. “Most certainly not his case of abuse. He was very neglected, mentally and physically. He'd been locked in the cupboard under the stairs for four years, obviously refused food by how frail he is, and starved of any affection or positive attention. He'd been forced to serve those humans like a House-elf, or slave! You can't honestly expect me to hate that he was Turned, even as vicious an attack as it was, compared to the way he was treated before.

“I see every difference in both of those situations, and I applaud Isabella for choosing him,” he admitted passionately, uncaring for the unattractive way Tatiana's jaw dropped open in a dubious gape. “Regardless of age and the manner in which she did so, she has saved him from a life of pain under their rule.”

“She attacked an eight year old and left him to die,” Tatiana stressed. “She didn't save him. She wanted to kill him!”

“But as always, Harry Potter remains alive, just like his brother,” Jonathon replied strongly. “He may not be the Boy Who Lived, but he's just as damn near impossible to kill.”

Tatiana shook her head and stood up, nearly slamming her mug on the wooden table to match with how angry she felt. She could feel Jonathon's eyes boring holes into her back, but she didn't turn and face him. “I don't care what you say or how intelligently you phrase it,” she muttered angrily. “Abuse may be horrible, and one of the worst things you could ever do to a child, but that's nothing compared to the taint that he now carries on his soul. The relationships he'll never have because he's different. He's a mixed being now. Not human. Not like his birth family. A dark creature. Non-human – a  _beast_.”

She heard as much as felt Jonathon stand up behind her, just as much as the bottled violence and rage he held that echoed to her own. “And humanity is worth the degradation and brutality that comes with an abusive household?” he queried fiercely. “The stain of living in the shadows and hunting the living as we do is no worse than living there. I would rather this life than that every day, and I thank the Gods above that I were not in his shoes. We at least have some measure of freedom. We come as we please, we decide what we want and what we do. Not some petty, manipulative, disgusting human that verbally, mentally and physically affects us in the worst of ways.

“We were blessed with this life from the moment of our very conception, and now that blessing has been bestowed upon Harry, and I could not think of a person more deserving of this freedom than him.”

Her hands curled into shaking fists, and she gnawed at her lower lip with reckless abandon at the timidness in her bones. She exhaled with a shuddering breath. “I agree that he is strong,” she uttered softly. “I don't agree with your views on our lifestyle. Yes, we have freedom, but it comes at a cost of never going into our world without prejudice and hate. We are immortal, Jonathon, and we take the life-blood of the living to remain so. How can we let him live in a society like ours that others are hell-bent on destroying? How is he going to live here? What about his real family?”

“His family abandoned him because they thought he was nothing more than a Squib,” Jonathon told her gently. “They won't look for him, and they won't find him even if they try. He's ours now, as far as I can tell. The Council won't take him when he's proved that he can handle his new condition, they don't want a new challenge. They wish to preserve the Old Ways and the traditions, and in no way is a Hybrid included in those traditions.”

“On the contrary, the so called 'traditions' for the factions would apply to him,” Tatiana said sagely. “Hybrid he may be, but when push comes to shove, he'll be labelled whatever they want him to be; Vampire, Werewolf, or Wizard.”

“True,” Jonathon agreed quietly. “But they won't disturb us in the coming years. Not until the Wizards raise an uproar, calling for the missing brother of the Boy Who Lived.”

“When Alaric Potter finds that he has a twin brother, Cousin, things are going to be tough,” she muttered wearily. “The Wizards will tear apart the foundations of our world looking for him, the missing Potter boy. I can just see the newspaper printings now..”

And it would happen, eventually. The Potters were a notoriously Light family that would do anything to retain their popularity with their world at large. If the papers caught wind of a dark family secret, such as secreting their youngest boy away to the Muggle world on suspicion of a Squib nature, things could be very bad for them indeed.

The Potter ancestors were most likely turning in their graves. What respectable, noble, Light family like the Potters would abandon one of their heirs to the clutches of the horrible Muggles? Suspected Squib or not.

“They're going to be nothing short of a shit-show,” Jonathon remarked grimly. “I'm sure Harry won't appreciate finding out the how and why his birth parents abandoned him to the hands of his relatives from the  _Daily Prophet_ _,_ if they ever found it all out.  _'Boy Who Lived's brother a disgrace; Harry Potter, the Squib heir'_.”

“He won't know what a Squib is,” Tatiana added, grimacing. “It falls to us to teach him the ways of the world. The bad included.”

“Well we can't exactly tell him that the world is full of rainbows and sunshine, now can we? He's already been beaten down more than a handful of times, he'll already know that the world is unfair.”

Tatiana shot him a dirty look. “Obviously,” she sneered. “But I guess this is why my employees -” she ignored the familiar protest of 'Our employees!' from Jonathon and continued blithely, “- laughed when I told them that we have a child student in our home. They know exactly what I'm like with things like this – with  _children_.”

“If you were confronted by a child version of yourself, you'd push her over and laugh,” Jonathon said wryly, sniggering. “We all know that. While _I_  am the child-friendly one, I'll be the one to fix up your fuck up's and get the ball rolling.”

“I'm not that bad!” she squawked indignantly. “I'll have you know that I once watched a child for an hour, and it never once cried!”

“Because you left for forty-five minutes and came back just in time to pretend you'd never even left,” Jonathon scoffed, an amused smirk stretching at his lips.

“How would know if I'd been there at all? It may not have even happened.”

“You forget that I know you,” Jonathon laughed, giving his head a small shake when all Tatiana did in response was scrunch up her nose in distaste. “We've been attached at the hip since we were babes, I don't think there's anything about you that I don't know. And vice versa, I know,” he said, before she could even contemplate complaining.

Tatiana sighed and rolled her eyes in defeat. “I suppose you're right.”

“I am,” he piped up, grinning knowingly at the mild look of annoyance that crossed her face.

“Well,” she began, giving herself a small shake to get moving and squashing the beginnings of a yawn. “I'm going to check on Harry one more time and get ready for bed. Seeing that dickhead really brought home just how tired I am.”

Jonathon sobered very quickly and nodded. “I'll shut everything off before I go to bed. Would you like me to lock everything up downstairs?”

Tatiana crooked a half-smile at the generous offer and shook her head. “Don't worry about it, I've got Lukas shutting it all off for me. But thank you, Jon, that was sweet of you,” she mumbled.

Even as Jonathon scoffed and rolled his eyes, she could see that he truly appreciated her gratitude. It was somewhat nice to see on him, when he was almost robotic nowaday. The Muggle Hospital had really tested his control, she knew, and he'd had to tighten his hold on his control by a million times. It was good to see him unwinding after keeping himself locked up for so long.

Even if he did annoy her and drive her to her wits end with his stupid ideas, such as bringing a stray child Vampire home.

“It's nothing,” he said good-naturedly, waving her off with a flippant hand. “I just thought I should offer because that's all you seem to be doing these days. But if you're sure you've got everything covered, I'll leave you to it.”

“You don't trust Lukas?” she asked him curiously, hovering just by Harry's newly repaired door, hand resting on the handle.

Jonathon hesitated briefly, before giving a reluctant shake of his head. “It's not so much that I distrust him,” he said slowly. “It's more like I'm.. wary of him. He's a weird one if ever I've seen one, and he just  _stares_ _._ ”

“At the dancers?”

“At everyone,” Jonathon stated, voice oddly low. “He was here when you were talking to Harry, and I swear he was trying to see the boy's insides he was looking so hard. I'm surprised his eyes haven't liquidated with how much he looks at people.”

“It's natural to be wary of one's surroundings, especially surroundings like _Delirium_ ,” Tatiana remarked logically. “If he hadn't have been curious as to why we brought an eight year old here, I'd have been more worried.”

Jonathon nodded slowly. “I suppose you're right,” he said quietly.

“Oh, I am,” she quipped, and grinned when Jonathon gave another scoff and strode off. “Goodnight, Jon!” she called after him cheerily.

He replied with flashing her his middle finger from over his shoulder as he disappeared into his room.

 _The idiot,_ she thought fondly, laughing quietly as she slowly opened Harry's door to peep inside.  _What I could do without him.._

She quietened quickly when she noticed that the boy was still sleeping, curled up on his side in a loose foetal position that looked strangely odd in the comfortably sized bed. It was most likely trained into him to sleep like a curled up cat, so he wasn't straining uncomfortably in his old cupboard. A fact that she was still stewing over.

The blankets were tucked up under his chin and gripped in his tiny fists, which were clasped loosely in his sleep, and he looked more than calm and pain-free. A relief for him and herself, to be sure. The Change was definitely winding down, and if there was ever evidence to say he was going to survive, it would be his calm, peaceful face. There was not a hint of pain, fear or death, and his heart was pumping strong and steady in his chest.

All was calm and fine.

She just hoped that it wasn't the calm before the storm. She didn't know how much more her poor heart could take. There was a reason why she didn't want any kids, and worrying for their life was one of the reasons why.

It sucked that Harry was such a likeable little lad, she would have rathered him be as unlikeable as possible, then if he died she wouldn't be affected in any way. She could have just let him go like she would have any stranger. But no, not this little boy. Fate seemed to be on his side, much like it was on his brother's.

It sucked.


End file.
